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THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 


THE  WORKS  OF   MAURICE   MAETERLINCK 

ESSAYS 

The  Treasure  of  the  Humblk 

Wisdom  and  Destiny 

The  Life  of  the  Bee 

The  Buried  Temple 

The  Double  Garden 

The  Measure  of  the  Hours 

On  Emerson,  and  Other  Essays 

Our   Eternity 

The  Unknown  Guest 

The  Wrack  of  the  Storm 

PLAYS 

Sisteb  Beatrice,  and  Ardiane  and  Barbe  Bleue 

jOYZELLE,    AND    MONNA    N'anNA 

The  Blue  Bird,   A  Fairy  Play 

Mary  Magdalene 

PiLLfAs  and  M£lisande,  and  Other  Plays 

Princess  Maleine 

The  Intruder,  and  Other  Plays 

Aglavaine  and  Selysette 

Poems 

HOLIDAY  EDITIONS 

Our  Friend  the  Dog 

The  Swarm 

The  Intelligence  op  the  Flowers 

Death 

Thoughts   from    Maeterlinck 

The  Blue  Bird 

The  Life  of  the  Bee 

News  of  Spring  and  Other  Nature  Studies 

The  Light  Beyond 


(y/oauttce  (yJoaetetlinck 


Utanalated   by 

[Lexaader   \jeixeiza  de  cJliDattod 


Copyright,  1913, 
By  The  Century  Co.  as  "Life  After  Death" 

Copyright,  1914, 
By  The  International  Magazine  Company 

Copyright,  1913.  1914, 
By  Dodd,  Mead  and  Company 

Copyright.  1916, 
By  Dodd,  Mead  and  Company,  Inc. 


« 


BF 
I03Z 


INTRODUCTION 


I 


TN  the  first  act  of  The  Blue  Bird,  the  fairy 
Berylune  send  INIytyl  and  Tyltyl  in  search  of 
happiness.  Shepherded  and  protected  by 
Light,  they  explore  the  Past  and  the  Future,  the 
Palace  of  Night,  the  Kingdoms  of  the  Dead  and  of 
the  Unborn.  At  one  moment  they  find  themselves 
2  in  a  graveyard;  and  JNIytyl  grows  fearful  at  her 
I  first  contact  with  the  great  mystery  of  Death.  Yet 
the  graveyard  with  its  wooden  crosses  and  grass- 
covered  mounds  is  moonlit  and  tranquil;  and  of  a 
sudden,  as  the  revealing  diamond  is  turned  in 
Tyltyl's  fingers,  even  the  tombstones  and  'all  the 
grand  investiture  of  death'  disappear,  to  be  replaced 
by  luxuriant,  swaying  clusters  of  Madonna  lilies. 

"Where  are  the  dead?"  asks  Mytyl,  in  amaze- 
ment, searching  in  the  grass  for  traces  of  even  one 
tombstone. 

Her  brother  also  looks: 

"There  are  no  dead,"  is  his  reply. 

Any  one  who  was  present  on  the  first  night  of 
the  play  at  the  HajTnarket  Theatre,  in  1909,  will 


-^  -v 


vi  INTRODUCTION 

not  easily  forget  the  audience's  little  gasp  of  de- 
lighted surprise.  Yet  the  two  lines  of  dialogue  were 
more  than  a  stage  effect,  more  than  an  aspect  of 
mysticism ;  almost  they  may  be  regarded  as  the  es- 
sence of  Maeterlinck's  later  work.  Since  the  Life 
of  the  Bee,  since  the  earlier  essays  and  such  pure 
drama  as  Monna  Vanna,  The  Blhid  and  Pelleas  and 
Melisande,  his  mind  seems  to  have  been  brooding 
more  and  more  on  the  part  which  Death,  the  great 
twin  mystery  of  the  world,  plays  in  the  life  of  man 
and  of  the  race.  In  The  Death  of  Tintagiles  there 
is  a  barred  and  studded  door,  through  which,  for  all 
its  studs  and  bars,  there  steals  a  miasma  of  dread. 
And,  when  the  door  opens,  it  is  to  release  a  spirit 
of  annihilation  which  the  concerted  efforts  of  Tinta- 
giles' sisters  can  neither  restrain  nor  force  back. 

In  The  Blue  Bird  we  are  shown  that  a  man  can- 
not die  so  long  as  he  dwells  in  the  memory  of  those 
who  loved  him.  In  his  latest  work  Maeterlinck  gives 
to  the  dead  an  objective  existence.  In  part  each 
generation  survives  its  own  death  and  transmits 
to  its  successors  the  heritage  of  aspiration  and 
achievement,  of  knowledge  and  passion,  which  it  has 
received  from  its  predecessors;  in  greater  part  the 
objective  existence  is  founded  on  new  modes  of 


INTRODUCTION  vii 

communication,  a  new  study  of  psychic  relationship 
and  a  new  belief  in  a  subliminal  state. 

I  have  collected  in  the  present  volume  a  selec- 
tion of  essays  illustrating  the  later  stages  of  Maeter- 
linck's quest.  Never  in  history  have  so  many 
women  and  men,  stricken  suddenly  and  without 
warning,  sought  so  unanimously  and  painfully  to 
penetrate  the  veil  wherein  the  world's  oldest  mys- 
tery is  shrouded.  The  finality  of  death  was  a  chal- 
lenge flung  down  and  eagerly  taken  up  by  all  whom 
the  loss  of  son  or  brother  had  taken  unawares.  To 
Maeterlinck  the  war  has  brought  in  great  part  the 
annihilation  of  a  people,  his  own  people;  it  has 
inspired  him  to  a  splendour  of  indignation  and  pity; 
but,  more  gravely  and  urgently  than  ever  before, 
it  has  demanded  of  him  an  answer  to  the  question 
'of  the  Sadducees,  who  "say  there  is  no  resurrection." 

Readers  wishing  to  study  the  complete  series  of 
essays  from  which  the  sixteen  in  this  volume  are 
taken  will  find  them  in  the  three  books  entitled, 
Our  Eternity,  The  Unknown  Guest  and  The 
Wrack  of  the  Storm,  all  of  which  are  issued  by  the 
present  publishers. 

Alexander  Teixeira  de  Mattos. 

Chelsea,  9  April  1917. 


CONTENTS 

CHA.FTEB  PA8E 

INTRODUCTION V 

•  I.    OUR  INJUSTICE  TO  DEATH 3 

n.    ANNIHILATION 25 

III.  COMMUNICATIONS    WITH    THE    DEAD     ....  33 

IV.  THE    FATE    OF    OUR    CONSCIOUSNESS    ....  65 

-V.    TWO    ASPECTS    OF    INFINITY 81 

VI.     OUR    FATE    IN    THOSE    INFINITIES        ....  99 

VII.     CONCLUSIONS 117 

'VIII.    THE   KNOWLEDGE  OF  THE  FUTURE       .        ...  129 

IX.    HEROISM 213 

X.    ON  REREADING  THUCYDIDES 227 

,-XI.    THE    DEAD    DO    NOT    DIE 243 

XII.    IN  MEMORIAM 253 

XIII.  THE   LIFE   OF  THE  DEAD 257 

XIV.  THE    WAR   AND    THE    PROPHETS 267 

XV.    THE  WILL  OF  EARTH 281 

.  XVI.    WHEN  THE  WAR  IS  OVER 293 


OUR  INJUSTICE  TO  DEATH 


OUR  INJUSTICE  TO  DEATH 


IT  has  been  well  said: 
"Death  and  death  alone  is  what  we  must 
consult  about  life;  and  not  some  vague  future 
or  survival,  where  we  shall  not  be.  It  is  our  own 
end;  and  everything  happens  in  the  interval  be- 
tween death  and  now.  Do  not  talk  to  me  of  those 
imaginary  prolongations  which  wield  over  us  the 
childish  spell  of  number;  do  not  talk  to  me — ^to  me 
who  am  to  die  outright — of  societies  and  peoples! 
There  is  no  reality,  there  is  no  true  duration,  save 
that  between  the  cradle  and  the  grave.  The  rest  is 
mere  bombast,  show,  delusion !  They  call  me  a  mas- 
ter because  of  some  magic  in  my  speech  and 
thoughts;  but  I  am  a  frightened  child  in  the  pres- 
ence of  death !"  ^ 

*  Marie  Len^ru,  hea  Afranchis,  Act  III.,  sc.  iv. 

3 


4  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

2 

That  is  where  we  stand.  For  us,  death  is  the  one 
event  that  counts  in  our  life  and  in  our  universe. 
It  is  the  point  whereat  all  that  escapes  our  vigilance 
unites  and  conspires  against  our  happiness.  The 
more  our  thoughts  struggle  to  turn  away  from  it 
the  closer  do  they  press  around  it.  The  more  we 
dread  it,  the  more  dreadful  it  becomes,  for  it  but 
thrives  upon  our  fears.  He  who  seeks  to  forget  it 
has  his  memory  filled  with  it ;  he  who  tries  to  shun 
it  meets  naught  else.  It  clouds  everything  with  its 
shadow.  But  though  we  think  of  death  incessantly, 
we  do  so  unconsciously,  without  learning  to  know 
death.  We  compel  our  attention  to  turn  its  back 
upon  it,  instead  of  going  to  it  with  uplifted  head. 
All  the  forces  which  might  avail  to  face  death  we 
exhaust  in  averting  our  will  from  it.  We  deliver 
it  into  the  groping  hands  of  instinct  and  we  grant 
it  not  one  hour  of  our  intelligence.  Is  it  surpris- 
ing that  the  idea  of  death,  which  should  be  the  most 
perfect  and  the  most  luminous  of  ideas — being  the 
most  persistent  and  the  most  inevitable — remains 
the  flimsiest  and  the  only  one  that  is  a  laggard? 
How  should  we  know  the  one  power  which  we  never 
look  in  the  face?    How  could  it  have  profited  by 


OUR  INJUSTICE  TO  DEATH       5 

gleams  kindled  only  to  help  us  escape  it?  To 
fathom  its  abysses,  we  wait  until  the  most  enfeebled, 
the  most  disordered  moments  of  our  life  arrive.  We 
do  not  begin  to  think  of  death  until  we  have  no 
longer  the  strength,  I  will  not  say,  to  think,  but 
even  to  breathe.  A  man  returning  among  us  from 
another  century  would  have  difficulty  in  recognis- 
ing, in  the  depths  of  a  present-day  soul,  the  image 
of  his  gods,  of  his  duty,  of  his  love  or  of  his  universe ; 
but  the  figure  of  death,  when  everything  has 
changed  around  it  and  when  even  that  which  com- 
poses it  and  upon  which  it  depends  has  vanished,  he 
would  find  almost  untouched,  rough-drawn  as  it  was 
by  our  fathers,  hundreds,  nay,  thousands  of  years 
ago.  Our  intelligence,  grown  so  bold  and  active, 
has  not  worked  upon  this  figure,  has  not,  so  to 
speak,  retouched  it  in  any  way.  Though  we  may 
no  longer  believe  in  the  tortures  of  the  damned,  all 
the  vital  cells  of  the  most  sceptical  among  us  are  still 
steeped  in  the  appalling  mystery  of  the  Hebrew 
Sheol,  the  pagan  Hades,  or  the  Christian  Hell. 
Though  it  may  no  longer  be  lighted  by  very  definite 
flames,  the  gulf  still  opens  at  the  end  of  life,  and,  if 
less  known,  is  all  the  more  formidable.  And  there- 
fore, when  the  impending  hour  strikes  to  which  we 


6  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

dared  not  raise  our  eyes,  everything  fails  us  at  the 
same  time.  Those  two  or  three  uncertain  ideas 
M  hereon,  without  examining  them,  we  had  meant  to 
lean  give  way  like  rushes  beneath  the  weight  of  the 
last  minutes.  In  vain  we  seek  a  refuge  among  re- 
flexions which  are  illusive  or  are  strange  to  us  and 
which  do  not  know  the  roads  to  our  heart.  No  one 
awaits  us  on  the  last  shore  where  all  is  unprepared, 
where  naught  remains  afoot  save  terror. 

3 

Bossuet,  the  great  poet  of  the  tomb,  says : 

"It  is  not  worthy  of  a  Christian" — and  I  would 
add,  of  a  man — "to  postpone  his  struggle  with 
death  until  the  moment  when  it  arrives  to  carry 
him  off." 

It  were  a  salutary  thing  for  each  of  us  to  work 
out  his  idea  of  death  in  the  light  of  his  days  and 
the  strength  of  his  intelligence  and  stand  by  it. 
He  would  say  to  death: 

"I  know  not  who  you  are,  or  I  would  be  your 
master;  but,  in  days  when  my  eyes  saw  clearer 
than  to-day,  I  learnt  what  you  were  not:  that  is 
enough  to  prevent  you  from  becoming  mine." 

He  would  thus  bear,  graven  on  his  memory,  a 


OUR  INJUSTICE  TO  DEATH       7 

tried  image  against  which  the  last  agony  would  not 
prevail  and  from  which  the  phantom-stricken  eyes 
would  draw  fresh  comfort.  Instead  of  the  terrible 
prayer  of  the  dying,  which  is  the  prayer  of  the 
depths,  he  would  say  his  own  prayer,  that  of  the 
peaks  of  his  existence,  where  would  be  gathered, 
like  angels  of  peace,  the  most  lucid,  the  most  rare- 
fied thoughts  of  his  life.  Is  not  that  the  prayer  of 
prayers?  After  all,  what  is  a  true  and  worthy 
prayer,  if  not  the  most  ardent  and  disinterested 
effort  to  reach  and  grasp  the  unknown? 

4 

"The  doctors  and  the  priests,"  said  Napoleon, 
"have  long  been  making  death  grievous." 

And  Bacon  wrote: 

"Pompa  mortis  magis  terret  quam  mors  ipsa." 

Let  us,  then,  learn  to  look  upon  death  as  it  is  in 
itself,  free  from  the  horrors  of  matter  and  stripped 
of  the  terrors  of  the  imagination.  Let  us  first  get 
rid  of  all  that  goes  before  and  does  not  belong  to 
it.  Thus  we  impute  to  it  the  tortures  of  the  last 
illness;  and  that  is  not  just.  Illnesses  have  nothing 
in  common  with  that  which  ends  them.  They  form 
part  of  life  and  not  of  death.    We  readily  forget 


8  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

the  most  cruel  sufferings  that  restore  us  to  health ; 
and  the  first  sun  of  convalescence  destroys  the  most 
unbearable  memories  of  the  chamber  of  pain.  But 
let  death  come;  and  at  once  we  overwhelm  it  with 
all  the  evil  done  before  it.  Not  a  tear  but  is  remem- 
bered and  used  as  a  reproach,  not  a  cry  of  pain 
but  becomes  a  cry  of  accusation.  Death  alone  bears 
the  weight  of  the  errors  of  nature  or  the  ignorance 
of  science  that  have  uselessly  prolonged  torments 
in  whose  name  we  curse  death  because  it  puts  a 
term  to  them. 


In  point  of  fact,  whereas  sicknesses  belong  to 
nature  or  to  life,  the  agony,  which  seems  peculiar 
to  death,  is  wholly  in  the  hands  of  men.  Now  what 
we  most  dread  is  the  awful  struggle  at  the  end  and 
especially  the  last,  terrible  second  of  rupture  which 
we  shall  perhaps  see  approaching  during  long  hours 
of  helplessness  and  which  suddenly  hurls  us,  naked, 
disarmed,  abandoned  by  all  and  stripped  of  every- 
thing, into  an  unknown  that  is  the  home  of  the  only 
invincible  terrors  which  the  soul  of  man  has  ever 
felt. 


OUR  INJUSTICE  TO  DEATH       9 

It  is  doubly  unjust  to  impute  the  tomients  of 
that  second  to  death.  We  shall  see  presently  in 
what  manner  a  man  of  to-day,  if  he  would  remain 
faithful  to  his  ideas,  should  picture  to  himsejf  the 
unknown  into  which  death  flings  us.  Let  us  con- 
fine ourselves  here  to  the  last  struggle.  As  science 
progresses,  it  prolongs  the  agony  which  is  the  most 
dreadful  moment  and  the  sharpest  peak  of  human 
pain  and  horror,  for  the  watchers,  at  least ;  for  very 
often  the  consciousness  of  him  whom  death  has 
brought  to  bay  is  already  greatly  dulled  and  per- 
ceives no  more  than  the  distant  murmur  of  the 
sufferings  which  it  seems  to  be  enduring.  All  doc- 
tors consider  it  their  first  duty  to  prolong  to  the 
uttermost  even  the  cruellest  pangs  of  the  most  hope- 
less agony.  Who  has  not,  at  the  bedside  of  a  dying 
man,  twenty  times  wished  and  not  once  dared  to 
throw  himself  at  their  feet  and  implore  them  to 
show  mercy?  They  are  filled  with  so  great  a  cer- 
tainty and  the  duty  which  they  obey  leaves  so  little 
room  for  the  least  doubt  that  pity  and  reason, 
blinded  by  tears,  curb  their  revolt  and  recoil  before 
a  law  which  all  recognise  and  revere  as  the  highest 
law  of  man's  conscience. 


10  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

6 

One  day,  this  prejudice  will  strike  us  as  barbar- 
ous. Its  roots  go  down  to  the  unacknowledged 
fears  left  in  the  heart  by  religions  that  have  long 
since  died  out  in  the  intelligence  of  men.  That  is 
why  the  doctors  act  as  though  convinced  that  there 
is  no  known  torture  but  is  preferable  to  those 
awaiting  us  in  the  unknown.  They  seem  persuaded 
that  every  minute  gained  amid  the  most  intoler- 
able sufferings  is  snatched  from  the  incomparably 
more  dreadful  sufferings  which  the  mysteries  of 
the  hereafter  reserve  for  men;  and  of  two  evils,  to 
avoid  that  which  they  know  to  be  imaginary,  they 
choose  the  only  real  one.  Besides,  in  thus  post- 
poning the  end  of  a  torture,  which,  as  old  Seneca 
says,  is  the  best  part  of  that  torture,  they  are  but 
yielding  to  the  unanimous  error  which  makes  its 
enclosing  circle  more  iron-bound  every  day:  the 
prolongation  of  the  agony  increasing  the  horror  of 
death;  and  the  horror  of  death  demanding  the 
prolongation  of  the  agony. 

7 
The  doctors,  on  their  side,  say  or  might  say  that. 


OUR  INJUSTICE  TO  DEATH      11 

in  the  present  stage  of  science,  two  or  three  cases 
excepted,  there  is  never  a  certainty  of  death.  Not 
to  support  life  to  its  last  limits,  even  at  the  cost  of 
insupportable  torments,  might  be  murder.  Doubt- 
less there  is  not  one  chance  in  a  hundred  thousand 
that  the  patient  escape.  No  matter :  if  that  chance 
exist  which,  in  the  majority  of  cases,  will  give  but 
a  few  days,  or,  at  the  utmost,  a  few  months  of  a 
life  that  will  not  be  the  real  life,  but  much  rather, 
as  the  Romans  called  it,  "an  extended  death," 
those  hundred  thousand  useless  torments  will  not 
have  been  in  vain.  A  single  hour  snatched  from 
death  outweighs  a  whole  existence  of  tortures. 

Here  we  have,  face  to  face,  two  values  that  can- 
not be  compared ;  and,  if  we  mean  to  weigh  them  in 
the  same  balance,  we  must  heap  the  scale  which  we 
see  with  all  that  remains  to  us,  that  is  to  say,  with 
every  imaginable  pain,  for  at  the  decisive  hour  this 
is  the  only  weight  which  counts  and  which  is  heavy 
enough  to  raise  by  a  hair's-breadth  the  other  scale 
that  dips  into  what  we  do  not  see  and  is  loaded  with 
the  thick  darkness  of  another  world. 

8 
Swollen  by  so  many  adventitious  horrors,  the 


12  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

horror  of  death  becomes  such  that,  without  reason- 
ing, we  accept  the  doctor's  reasons.  And  yet  there 
is  one  point  on  which  they  are  beginning  to  yield 
and  to  agree.  They  are  slowly  consenting,  when 
there  is  no  hope  left,  if  not  to  deaden,  at  least  to 
dull  the  last  agonies.  Formerly,  none  of  them 
would  have  dared  to  do  so ;  and,  even  to-day,  many 
of  them  hesitate  and,  like  misers,  measure  out  nig- 
gardly drops  of  the  clemency  and  peace  which  they 
ought  to  lavish  and  which  they  grudge  in  their  dread 
of  weakening  the  last  resistance,  that  is  to  say,  the 
most  useless  and  painful  quiverings  of  reluctant 
life  refusing  to  give  place  to  on-coming  rest. 

It  is  not  for  me  to  decide  whether  their  pity  might 
show  greater  daring.  It  is  enough  to  state  once 
more  that  all  this  has  no  concern  with  death.  It 
happens  before  it  and  beneath  it.  It  is  not  the 
arrival  of  death  but  the  departure  of  life  that  is 
appalling.  It  is  not  death  but  life  that  we  must 
act  upon.  It  is  not  death  that  attacks  life;  it  is 
life  that  wrongfully  resists  death.  Evils  hasten 
from  every  side  at  the  approach  of  death,  but  not 
at  its  call;  and,  though  they  gather  round  it,  they 
did  not  come  with  it.  Do  you  accuse  sleep  of  the 
fatigue  that  oppresses  you  if  you  do  not  yield  to  it? 


OUR  INJUSTICE  TO  DEATH     13 

All  those  strugglings,  those  waitings,  those  tossings, 
those  tragic  cursings  are  on  the  side  of  the  slope 
to  which  we  cling  and  not  on  the  other  side.  They 
are,  indeed,  accidental  and  temporary  and  emanate 
only  from  our  ignorance.  All  our  knowledge 
merely  helps  us  to  die  a  more  painful  death  than  the 
animals  that  know  nothing.  A  day  will  come  when 
science  will  turn  upon  its  error  and  no  longer  hesi- 
tate to  shorten  our  woes.  A  day  will  come  when 
it  will  dare  and  act  with  certainty ;  when  life,  grown 
wiser,  will  depart  silently  at  its  hour,  knowing  that 
it  has  reached  its  term,  even  as  it  withdraws  silently 
every  evening,  knowing  that  its  task  is  done.  Once 
the  doctor  and  the  sick  man  have  learnt  what  they 
have  to  learn,  there  will  be  no  physical  nor  meta- 
physical reason  why  the  advent  of  death  should 
not  be  as  salutary  as  that  of  sleep.  Perhaps  even, 
as  there  will  be  nothing  else  to  take  into  considera- 
tion, it  will  be  possible  to  surround  death  with  pro- 
founder  ecstasies  and  fairer  dreams.  In  any  case 
and  from  this  day,  with  death  once  acquitted  of 
that  which  goes  before,  it  will  be  easier  to  look 
upon  it  without  fear  and  to  lighten  that  which 
comes  after. 


14  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

9 

Death,  as  we  usually  picture  it,  has  two  terrors 
looming  behind  it.  The  first  has  neither  face  nor 
form  and  permeates  the  whole  region  of  our  mind; 
the  other  is  more  definite,  more  explicit,  but  almost 
as  powerful.  The  latter  strikes  all  our  senses.  Let 
us  examine  it  first. 

Even  as  we  impute  to  death  all  the  evils  that 
precede  it,  so  do  we  add  to  the  dread  which  it  in- 
spires all  that  happens  beyond  it,  thus  doing  it  the 
same  injustice  at  its  going  as  at  its  coming.  Is  it 
death  that  digs  our  graves  and  orders  us  to  keep 
that  which  is  made  to  disappear?  If  we  cannot 
think  without  horror  of  what  befalls  the  beloved  in 
the  grave,  is  it  death  or  we  that  placed  him  there? 
Because  death  carries  the  spirit  to  some  place  un- 
known, shall  we  reproach  it  with  our  bestowal  of 
the  body  which  it  leaves  with  us  ?  Death  descends 
into  our  midst  to  change  the  place  of  a  life  or  change 
its  form:  let  us  judge  it  by  what  it  does  and  not  by 
what  we  do  before  it  comes  and  after  it  is  gone.  For 
it  is  already  far  away  when  we  begin  the  frightful 
work  which  we  try  hard  to  prolong  to  the  very 
utmost,  as  though  we  were  persuaded  that  it  is  our 
only  security  against  forgetfulness.     I  am  well 


OUR  INJUSTICE  TO  DEATH     15 

aware  that,  from  any  other  than  the  human  point 
of  view,  this  proceeding  is  very  innocent;  and  that, 
looked  upon  from  a  sufficient  height,  decomposing 
flesh  is  no  more  repulsive  than  a  fading  flower  or  a 
crumbling  stone.  But,  when  all  is  said,  it  offends 
our  senses,  shocks  our  memory,  daunts  our  courage, 
whereas  it  would  be  so  easy  for  us  to  avoid  the  foul 
ordeal.  Purified  by  fire,  the  remembrance  lives  en- 
throned as  a  beautiful  idea ;  and  death  is  naught  but 
an  immortal  birth  cradled  in  flames.  This  has 
been  well  understood  by  the  wisest  and  happiest  na- 
tions in  history.  .What  happens  in  our  graves  pois- 
ons our  thoughts  together  with  our  bodies.  The 
figure  of  death,  in  the  imagination  of  men,  depends 
before  all  upon  the  form  of  burial ;  and  the  funeral 
rites  govern  not  only  the  fate  of  those  who  depart 
but  also  the  happiness  of  those  who  stay,  for  they 
raise  in  the  ultimate  background  of  life  the  great 
image  upon  which  men's  eyes  linger  in  consolation 

or  despair. 

10 

There  is,  therefore,  but  one  terror  particular  to 
death:  that  of  the  unknown  into  which  it  hurls  us. 
In  facing  it,  let  us  lose  no  time  in  putting  from  our 
minds  all  that  the  positive  religions  have  left  there. 


16  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

Let  us  remember  only  that  it  is  not  for  us  to  prove 
that  they  are  not  proved,  but  for  them  to  estabhsh 
that  they  are  true.  Now  not  one  of  them  brings  us 
a  proof  before  which  an  honest  intelligence  can  bow. 
Now  would  it  suffice  if  that  intelligence  were  able  to 
bow;  for  man  lawfully  to  believe  and  thus  to  limit 
his  endless  seeking,  the  proof  would  need  to  be  ir- 
resistible. The  God  offered  to  us  by  the  best  and 
strongest  of  them  has  given  us  our  reason  to  employ 
loyally  and  fully,  that  is  to  say,  to  try  to  attain,  be- 
fore all  and  in  all  things,  that  which  appears  to  be 
the  truth.  Can  He  exact  that  we  should  accept,  in 
spite  of  it,  a  belief  whose  doubtfulness,  from  the 
human  point  of  view,  is  not  denied  by  its  wisest  and 
most  ardent  defenders?  He  only  offers  us  a  very 
uncertain  story,  which,  even  if  scientifically  sub- 
stantiated, would  be  merely  a  beautiful  lesson  in 
morality  and  which  is  buttressed  by  prophecies  and 
miracles  no  less  doubtful.  Must  we  here  call  to 
mind  that  Pascal,  to  defend  that  creed  which  was 
already  tottering  at  a  time  when  it  seemed  at  its 
zenith,  vainly  attempted  a  demonstration  the  mere 
aspect  of  which  would  be  enough  to  destroy  the  last 
remnant  of  faith  in  a  wavering  mind?  Better  than 
any  other,  he  knew  the  stock  proofs  of  the  theolo- 


OUR  INJUSTICE  TO  DEATH     17 

gians,  for  they  had  been  the  sole  study  of  the  last 
years  of  his  life.  If  but  one  of  these  proofs  could 
have  resisted  examination,  his  genius,  one  of  the 
three  or  four  most  profound  and  lucid  geniuses  ever 
known  to  mankind,  must  have  given  it  an  irresistible 
force.  But  he  does  not  linger  over  these  arguments, 
whose  weakness  he  feels  too  well;  he  pushes  them 
scornfully  aside,  he  glories  and,  in  a  manner,  re- 
joices in  their  futility: 

"Who  then  will  blame  Christians  for  not  being 
able  to  give  a  reason  for  their  faith,  those  who 
profess  a  religion  for  which  they  cannot  give  a 
reason?  They  declare,  in  presenting  it  to  the 
world,  that  it  is  a  foolishness,  stultitimn;  and  then 
you  complain  that  they  do  not  prove  it!  If  they 
proved  it,  they  would  not  be  keeping  their  word; 
it  is  in  being  destitute  of  proofs  that  they  are  not 
destitute  of  sense." 

His  sohtary  argument,  the  one  to  which  he  clings 
desperately  and  devotes  all  the  power  of  his  genius, 
is  the  very  condition  of  man  in  the  universe,  that 
incomprehensible  medley  of  greatness  and  wretch- 
edness, for  which  there  is  no  accounting  save  by  the 
mystery  of  the  first  fall : 

"For  man  is  more  incomprehensible  without  that 


18  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

mystery  than  the  mystery  itself  is  incomprehensible 
to  man." 

He  is  therefore  reduced  to  establishing  the  truth 
of  the  Scriptures  by  an  argument  drawn  from  the 
very  Scriptures  in  question;  and — what  is  more 
serious — to  explain  a  wide  and  great  and  indis- 
putable mystery  by  another,  small,  narrow  and 
crude  mystery  that  rests  only  upon  the  legend  which 
it  is  his  business  to  prove.  And,  let  us  observe  in 
passing,  it  is  a  fatal  thing  to  replace  one  mystery 
by  another  and  lesser  mystery.  In  the  hierarchy 
of  the  unknown,  mankind  always  ascends  from  the 
smaller  to  the  greater.  On  the  other  hand,  to 
descend  from  the  greater  to  the  smaller  is  to  relapse 
into  the  condition  of  primitive  man,  who  carries 
his  barbarism  to  the  point  of  replacing  the  infinite 
by  a  fetish  or  an  amulet.  The  measure  of  man's 
greatness  is  the  greatness  of  the  mysteries  which  he 
cultivates  or  on  which  he  dwells. 

To  return  to  Pascal,  he  feels  that  everything  is 
crmnbling  around  him;  and  so,  in  the  collapse  of 
human  reason,  he  at  last  offers  us  the  monstrous 
wager  that  is  the  supreme  avowal  of  the  bankruptcy 
and  despair  of  his  faith.     God,  he  says,  meaning  his 


OUR  INJUSTICE  TO  DEATH     19 

God  and  the  Christian  religion  with  all  its  precepts 
and  all  its  consequences,  exists  or  does  not  exist. 
We  are  unable,  by  human  arguments,  to  prove  that 
He  exists  or  that  He  does  not  exist. 

"If  there  is  a  God,  He  is  infinitely  incomprehen- 
sible, because,  having  neither  divisions  nor  bounds, 
He  has  no  relation  to  us.  We  are  therefore  in- 
capable of  knowing  either  what  He  is  or  if  He  is." 

God  is  or  is  not. 

"But  to  which  side  shall  we  lean?  Reason  can 
determine  nothing  about  it.  There  is  an  infinite 
gulf  that  separates  us.  A  game  is  played  at  the 
uttermost  part  of  this  infinite  distance,  in  which 
heads  may  turn  up  or  tails.  Which  will  you  wager? 
There  is  no  reason  for  betting  on  either  one  or  the 
other;  you  cannot  reasonably  defend  either." 

The  correct  course  would  be  not  to  wager  at  all. 

"Yes,  but  you  must  wager:  this  is  not  a  matter 
for  your  will;  you  are  launched  in  it." 

Not  to  wager  that  God  exists  means  wagering 
that  He  does  not  exist,  for  which  He  will  punish 
you  eternally.  What  then  do  you  risk  by  wagering, 
at  all  hazards,  that  He  exists?  If  He  does  not, 
you  lose  a  few  small  pleasures,  a  few  wretched  com- 
forts of  this  life,  because  your  little  sacrifice  will 


20  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

not  have  been  rewarded;  if  He  exists,  you  gain  an 
eternity  of  unspeakable  happiness. 

"  'It  is  ti-ue,  but,  in  spite  of  all,  I  am  so  made 
that  I  cannot  believe.' 

"Never  mind,  follow  the  way  in  which  they  be- 
gan who  believe  and  who  at  first  did  not  believe 
either,  taking  holy  water,  having  masses  said,  etc. 
That  in  itself  will  make  you  believe  and  will  reduce 
you  to  the  level  of  the  beasts." 

"  'But  that  is  just  what  I  am  afraid  of.' 

"Why?    What  have  you  to  lose?" 

Nearly  three  centuries  of  apologetics  have  not 
added  one  useful  argument  to  that  terrible  and 
despairing  page  of  Pascal.  And  this  is  all  that 
human  intelligence  has  found  to  compel  our  life. 
If  the  God  who  demands  our  faith  will  not  have  us 
decide  by  our  reason,  by  what  then  must  our  choice 
be  made?  By  usage?  By  the  accidents  of  race 
or  birth,  by  some  sesthetic  or  sentimental  pitch- 
and-toss?  Or  has  He  set  within  us  another  higher 
and  surer  faculty,  before  which  the  understanding 
must  yield?  If  so,  where  is  it?  What  is  its  name? 
If  this  God  punishes  us  for  not  having  blindly  fol- 
lowed a  faith  that  does  not  force  itself  irresistibly 
upon  the  intelligence  which  He  gave  us;  if  He 


OUR  INJUSTICE  TO  DEATH     21 

chastises  us  for  not  having  made,  in  the  presence 
of  the  great  enigma  with  which  He  confronts  us,  a 
choice  which  is  rejected  by  that  best  and  most  divine 
part  which  He  has  implanted  in  us,  we  have  nothing 
left  to  reply:  we  are  the  dupes  of  a  cruel  and  incom- 
prehensible sport,  we  are  the  victims  of  a  terrible 
snare  and  an  immense  injustice;  and,  whatever  the 
torments  wherewith  that  injustice  may  load  us,  they 
^ill  be  less  intolerable  than  the  eternal  presence  of 
its  Author. 


II 

ANNIHILATION 


II 

ANNIHILATION 

1 

AND  now  we  stand  before  the  abyss.  It  is 
void  of  all  the  dreams  with  which  our 
fathers  peopled  it.  They  thought  that 
they  knew  what  was  there;  we  know  only  what  is 
not  there.  It  is  the  vaster  by  all  that  we  have 
learned  to  know  nothing  of.  While  waiting  for  a 
scientific  certainty  to  break  through  its  darkness — 
for  man  has  the  right  to  hope  for  that  which  he  does 
not  yet  conceive — the  only  point  that  interests  us, 
because  it  is  situated  in  the  little  circle  which  our 
actual  intelligence  traces  in  the  thickest  blackness 
of  the  night,  is  to  know  whether  the  unknown  for 
which  we  are  bound  will  be  dreadful  or  not. 

Outside  the  religions,  there  are  four  imaginable 
solutions  and  no  more:  total  annihilation;  survival 
with  our  consciousness  of  to-day;  survival  without 

any  sort  of  consciousness;  lastly,  survival  in  the 

25 


26  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

universal  consciousness,  or  with  a  consciousness  dif- 
ferent from  that  which  we  possess  in  this  world. 


Total  annihilation  is  impossible.  /We  are  the 
prisoners  of  an  infinity  without  outlet,  wherein 
nothing  perishes,  wherein  everything  is  dispersed 
but  nothing  lost.  Neither  a  body  nor  a  thought 
can  drop  out  of  the  universe,  out  of  time  and  space. 
Not  an  atom  of  our  flesh,  not  a  quiver  of  our  nerves 
will  go  where  they  will  cease  to  be,  for  there  is  no 
place  where  anything  ceases  to  be.  The  brightness 
of  a  star  extinguished  millions  of  years  ago  still 
wanders  in  the  ether  where  our  eyes  will  perhaps 
behold  it  this  very  night,  pursuing  its  endless  road. 
It  is  the  same  with  all  that  we  see,  as  with  all  that 
we  do  not  see.  To  be  able  to  do  away  with  a  thing, 
that  is  to  say,  to  fling  it  into  nothingness,  nothing- 
ness would  have  to  exist;  and,  if  it  exists,  under 
whatever  form,  it  is  no  longer  nothingness.  As  soon 
as  we  try  to  analyse  it,  to  define  it,  or  to  understand 
it,  thought  and  expressions  fail  us,  or  create  that 
which  they  are  struggling  to  deny.  It  is  as  con- 
trary to  the  nature  of  our  reason  and  probably  of  all 
imaginable  reason  to  conceive  nothingness  as  to 


ANNIHILATION  27 

conceive  limits  to  infinity.  Nothingness,  besides, 
is  but  a  negative  infinity,  a  sort  of  infinity  of  dark- 
ness opposed  to  that  which  our  inteUigence  strives 
to  illumine,  or  rather  it  is  but  a  child-name  or  nick- 
name which  our  mind  has  bestowed  upon  that 
which  it  has  not  attempted  to  embrace,  for  we  call 
nothingness  all  that  escapes  our  senses  or  our  reason 
and  exists  without  our  knowledge. 

3 

But,  it  will  perhaps  be  said,  though  the  anniliila- 
tion  of  every  world  and  every  thing  be  impossible, 
it  is  not  so  certain  that  their  death  is  impossible; 
and,  to  us,  what  is  the  difference  between  nothing- 
ness and  everlasting  death  ?  Here  again  we  are  led 
astray  by  our  imagination  and  by  words.  We  can 
no  more  conceive  death  than  we  can  conceive 
nothingness.  We  use  the  word  death  to  cover  those 
fragments  of  nothingness  which  we  believe  that  we 
understand;  but,  on  closer  examination,  we  are 
bound  to  recognise  that  our  idea  of  death  is  much 
too  puerile  to  contain  the  least  truth.  It  reaches 
no  higher  than  our  own  bodies  and  cannot  measure 
the  destinies  of  the  universe.  We  give  the  name  of 
death  to  anything  that  has  a  life  a  little  different 


28  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

from  ours.  Even  so  do  we  act  towards  a  world  that 
appears  to  us  motionless  and  frozen,  the  moon,  for 
instance,  because  we  are  persuaded  that  any  form 
of  existence,  animal  or  vegetable,  is  extinguished 
upon  it  for  ever.  But  it  is  now  some  years  since  we 
learned  that  the  most  inert  matter,  to  outward  seem- 
ing, is  animated  by  movements  so  powerful  and 
furious  that  all  animal  or  vegetable  life  is  no  more 
than  sleep  and  immobility  by  the  side  of  the  swirling 
eddies  and  immeasurable  energy  locked  up  in  a 
wayside  stone. 

"There  is  no  room  for  death!"  cried  Emily 
Bronte. 

But,  even  if,  in  the  infinite  series  of  the  centuries, 
all  matter  should  really  become  inert  and  motion- 
less, it  would  none  the  less  persist  under  one  form  or 
another;  and  persistence,  though  it  were  in  total 
immobility,  would,  after  all,  be  but  a  form  of  life 
stable  and  silent  at  last.  All  that  dies  falls  into 
life;  and  all  that  is  born  is  of  the  same  age  as  that 
which  dies.  If  death  carried  us  to  nothingness,  did 
birth  then  draw  us  out  of  that  same  nothingness? 
Why  should  the  second  be  more  impossible  than  the 
first?  The  higher  human  thought  rises  and  the 
wider  it  expands,  the  less  comprehensible  do  noth- 


ANNIHILATION  29 

ingness  and  death  become.  In  any  case — and  this 
is  what  matters  here— if  nothingness  were  possible, 
since  it  could  not  be  anything  whatever,  it  could  not 
be  dreadful. 


Ill 

COMMUNICATIONS  WITH  THE  DEAD 


Ill 

COMMUNICATIONS  WITH  THE  DEAD 


THE  spiritualists  communicate  or  think  that 
they  communicate  with  the  dead  by  means 
of  what  they  call  automatic  speech  and 
writing.  These  are  obtained  by  the  agency  of  a 
medium  ^  in  a  state  of  ecstasy,  or  rather  "trance," 

*  Those  who  take  up  the  study  of  these  supernormal  manifestations 
usually  ask  themselves: 

"Why  mediums?  Why  make  use  of  these  often  questionable  and 
always  inadequate  intermediaries?" 

The  reason  is  that,  hitherto,  no  way  has  been  discovered  of  doing 
without  them.  If  we  admit  the  spiritualistic  theory,  the  discarnate 
spirits  which  surround  us  on  every  side  and  which  are  separated  from 
us  by  the  impenetrable  and  mysterious  wall  of  death  seek,  in  order 
to  communicate  with  us,  the  line  of  least  resistance  between  the  two 
worlds  and  find  it  in  the  medium,  without  our  knowing  why,  even 
as  we  do  not  know  why  an  electric  current  passes  along  copper 
wire  and  is  stopped  by  glass  or  porcelain.  If,  on  the  other  hand, 
we  admit  the  telepathic  hypothesis,  which  is  the  more  probable,  we 
observe  that  the  thoughts,  intentions  or  suggestions  transmitted  are, 
in  the  majority  of  cases,  not  conveyed  from  one  subconscious  intelli- 
gence to  another.  There  is  need  of  an  organism  that  is,  at  the  same 
time,  a  receiver  and  a  transmitter;  and  this  organism  is  found  in 
the  medium.     Why?    Once  more,  we  know  absolutely  nothing  about 

33 


34  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

to  employ  the  vocabulary  of  the  new  science.  This 
condition  is  not  one  of  hypnotic  sleep,  nor  does  it 
seem  to  be  an  hysterical  manifestation;  it  is  often 
associated,  as  in  the  case  of  the  medium  Mrs.  Piper, 
with  perfect  health  and  complete  intellectual  and 
physical  balance.  It  is  rather  the  more  or  less  vol- 
untary emergence  of  a  second  or  subliminal  per- 
sonality or  consciousness  of  the  medium;  or,  if  we 
admit  the  spiritualistic  hypothesis,  his  occupation, 
his  "psychic  invasion,"  as  Myers  calls  it,  by  forces 
from  another  world.  In  the  "entranced"  subject, 
the  normal  consciousness  and  personality  are  en- 
tirely done  away  with;  and  he  replies  "automati- 
cally," sometimes  by  word  of  mouth,  more  often  in 
writing,  to  the  questions  put  to  him.  It  has  hap- 
pened that  he  speaks  and  writes  simultaneously,  his 
voice  being  occupied  by  one  spirit  and  his  hand  by 
another,  who  thus  carry  on  two  independent  con- 
versations.    More  rarely,  the  voice  and  the  two 

it,  even  as  we  do  not  know  why  one  body  or  combination  of  bodies 
is  sensitive  to  concentric  waves  in  wireless  telegraphy,  while  another 
is  not  affected  by  it.  We  are  here  groping,  as  indeed  we  grope  almost 
everywhere,  in  the  obscure  domain  of  undisputed  but  inexplicable 
facts.  Those  who  care  to  possess  more  precise  notions  on  the  theory 
of  mediumism  will  do  well  to  read  the  admirable  address  delivered 
by  Sir  William  Crookes,  as  president  of  the  S.P.R.,  on  the  29th  of 
January  1897. 


COMMUNICATIONS  WITH  DEAD  35 

hands  are  "possessed"  at  one  and  the  same  time; 
and  we  receive  three  different  communications. 
Obviously,  manifestations  of  this  sort  lend  them- 
selves to  frauds  and  impostures  of  all  kinds ;  and  the 
distrust  aroused  is  at  first  invincible.  But  there 
are  some  that  make  their  appearance  encompassed 
with  such  guarantees  of  good  faith  and  sincerity,  so 
often,  so  long  and  so  rigorously  checked  by  scien- 
tific men  of  unimpeachable  character  and  authority 
and  of  originally  inflexible  scepticism,  that  it  be- 
comes difficult  to  maintain  a  suspicion  at  the  finish.^ 

^The  questions  of  fraud  and  imposture  are  naturally  the  first  that 
suggest  themselves  when  we  begin  to  study  these  phenomena.  But 
the  slightest  acquaintance  with  the  life,  habits  and  proceedings  of 
the  three  or  four  leading  mediums  is  enough  to  remove  even  the 
faintest  shadow  of  suspicion.  Of  all  the  explanations  conceivable, 
that  one  which  attributes  everything  to  imposture  and  trickery  is 
unquestionably  the  most  extraordinary  and  the  least  probable.  More- 
o%'er,  by  reading  Richard  Hodgson's  report  entitled,  Observations  of 
certain  Phenomena  of  Trance  (Proceedings,  Vols.  VIII.  and  XIII.) 
and  also  J.  H.  Hyslop's  report  {Proceedings,  Vol.  XVI.),  we  can 
observe  the  precautions  taken,  even  to  the  extent  of  employing  special 
detectives,  to  make  certain  that  Mrs.  Piper,  for  instance,  was  unable, 
normally  and  humanly  speaking,  to  have  any  knowledge  of  the  facts 
which  she  revealed.  I  repeat,  from  the  moment  that  one  enters  upon 
this  study,  all  suspicions  are  dispelled  without  leaving  a  trace  behind 
them;  and  we  are  soon  convinced  that  the  key  to  the  riddle  must 
not  be  sought  in  imposture.  All  the  manifestations  of  the  dumb, 
mysterious  and  oppressed  personality  that  lies  concealed  in  every 
one  of  us  have  to  undergo  the  same  ordeal  in  their  turn;  and  those 
which  relate  to  the  divining-rod,  to  name  no  others,  are  at  this  mo- 
ment passing  through  the  same  crisis  of  incredulity.  Less  than  fifty 
years  ago,  most  of  the  hypnotic  phenomena  which  are  now  scientifi- 


36  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

Unfortunately,  I  am  not  able  to  enter  here  into  the 
details  of  some  of  these  purely  scientific  sittings, 
those  for  instance  of  Mrs.  Piper,  the  famous  me- 
dium with  whom  F.  W.  H.  Myers,  Richard  Hodg- 
son, Professor  Newbold,  of  the  University  of 
Pennsylvania,  Sir  Oliver  Lodge  and  William 
James  worked  during  a  number  of  years.  On  the 
other  hand,  it  is  precisely  the  accumulation  and 
coincidences  of  these  abnormal  details  which  gradu- 
ally produce  and  confirm  the  conviction  that  we  are 
in  the  presence  of  an  entirely  new,  improbable  but 
genuine  phenomenon,  which  is  sometimes  difficult 
of  classification  among  exclusively  terrestrial  phe- 
nomena. I  should  have  to  devote  to  these  "com- 
munications" a  special  study  which  would  exceed 
the  limits  of  this  essay ;  and  I  will  therefore  content 
myself  with  referring  those  who  care  to  know  more 
of  the  subject  to  Sir  Oliver  Lodge's  book.  The  Sur- 
vival of  Man;  and,  above  all,  to  the  twenty-five 
bulky  volumes  of  the  Proceedings  of  the  S.P.R., 
notably  to  the  report  and  comments  of  William 
James  on  the  Piper-Hodgson  sittings  in  Vol. 
XXIII.  and  to  Vol.  XIII. ,  where  Hodgson  ex- 

cally  classified  were  likewise  looked  upon  as  fraudulent.  It  seems 
that  man  is  loth  to  admit  that  there  lie  within  him  many  more 
things  than  he  imagined. 


COMMUNICATIONS  WITH  DEAD  37 

amines  the  facts  and  arguments  that  may  be  ad- 
duced for  or  against  the  agency  of  the  dead;  and, 
lastly,  to  Myers'  great  work,  Human  Personality 
and  its  Survival  after  Bodily  Death. 


The  "entranced"  mediums  are  invaded  or  pos- 
sessed by  different  familiar  spirits  to  whom  the 
new  science  gives  the  somewhat  inappropriate  and 
ambiguous  name  of  "controls."  Thus,  Mrs.  Piper 
is  visited  in  succession  by  Phinuit,  George  Pelham, 
or  "G.P.,"  Imperator,  Doctor  and  Rector.  Mrs. 
Thompson,  another  very  celebrated  medium,  has 
Nelly  for  her  usual  tenant,  while  graver  and  more 
illustrious  personages  would  take  possession  of 
Stainton  JNIoses,  a  clergyman.  Each  of  these  spirits 
retains  a  sharply  defined  character,  which  is  con- 
sistent throughout  and  which,  moreover,  for  the 
most  part  bears  no  relation  to  that  of  the  medium. 
Amongst  these,  Phinuit  and  Nelly  are  undoubtedly 
the  most  attractive,  the  most  original,  the  most 
living,  the  most  active  and,  above  all,  the  most 
talkative.  They  centralise  the  communications 
after  a  fashion;  they  come  and  go  officiously;  and, 
should  any  one  of  those  present  wish  to  be  brought 


oVsLi^^ 


38  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

into  touch  with  the  soul  of  a  deceased  relative  or 
friend,  they  fly  in  search  of  it,  find  it  amid  the 
invisible  throng,  usher  it  in,  announce  its  presence, 
speak  in  its  name,  transmit  and,  so  to  speak,  trans- 
late the  questions  and  replies ;  for  it  seems  that  it  is 
very  difficult  for  the  dead  to  communicate  with  the 
living  and  that  they  need  special  aptitudes  and  a 
concurrence  of  extraordinary  circumstances.  We 
will  not  yet  examine  what  they  have  to  reveal  to  us ; 
but  to  see  them  tlius  fluttering  to  and  fro  amid  the 
multitude  of  their  discarnate  brothers  and  sisters 
gives  us  a  first  impression  of  the  next  world  which  is 
none  too  reassuring;  and  we  say  to  ourselves  that 
the  dead  of  to-day  are  strangely  like  those  whom 
Ulysses  conjured  up  out  of  the  Cimmerian  darkness 
three  thousand  years  ago:  pale  and  empty  shades, 
bewildered,  incoherent,  puerile  and  terror-stricken, 
like  unto  dreams,  more  numerous  than  the  leaves 
that  fall  in  autumn  and,  like  them,  trembling  in  the 
unknown  winds  from  the  vast  plains  of  the  other 
world.  They  no  longer  even  have  enough  life  to  be 
unhappy ;  and  they  seem  to  drag  out,  we  know  not 
where,  a  precarious  and  idle  existence,  to  wander 
aimlessly,  to  hover  round  us,  slumbering,  or  chat- 
tering among  one  another  of  the  minor  matters  of 


COMMUNICATIONS  WITH  DEAD   39 

this  world ;  and,  when  a  gap  is  made  in  their  dark- 
ness, to  hasten  from  all  sides,  like  flocks  of  famished 
birds,  hungering  for  light  and  the  sound  of  a  human 
voice.  And,  in  spite  of  ourselves,  we  think  of  the 
Odyssey  and  the  sinister  words  of  the  shade  of 
Achilles  as  it  issued  from  Erebus: 

"Do  not,  O  illustrious  Ulysses,  speak  to  me  of 
death;  I  would  wish,  being  on  earth,  to  serve  for 
hire  with  another  man  of  no  estate,  who  had  not 
much  livelihood,  rather  than  rule  over  all  the  de- 
parted dead." 

3 

What  have  these  latterday  dead  to  tell  us?  To 
begin  with,  it  is  a  remarkable  thing  that  they  appear 
to  be  much  more  interested  in  events  here  below 
than  in  those  of  the  world  wherein  they  move. 
They  seem,  above  all,  jealous  to  establish  their 
identity,  to  prove  that  they  still  exist,  that  they 
recognise  us,  that  they  know  everything;  and,  to 
convince  us  of  this,  they  enter  into  the  most  minute 
and  forgotten  details  with  extraordinary  precision, 
perspicacity  and  prolixity.  They  are  also  extremely 
clever  at  unravelling  the  intricate  family  connec- 
tions of  the  person  actually  questioning  them,  of 


40  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

any  of  the  sitters,  or  even  of  a  stranger  entering  the 
room.  They  recall  this  one's  little  infirmities,  that 
one's  maladies,  the  eccentricities  or  personal  tenden- 
cies of  a  third.  They  have  cognisance  of  events 
taking  place  at  a  distance:  they  see,  for  instance, 
and  describe  to  their  hearers  in  London  an  insignifi- 
cant episode  in  Canada.  In  a  word,  they  say  and 
do  almost  all  the  disconcerting  and  inexplicable 
things  that  are  sometimes  obtained  from  a  first-rate 
medimn;  perhaps  they  even  go  a  little  further;  but 
there  comes  from  it  all  no  breath,  no  glimmer  of  the 
hereafter,  not  even  the  something  vaguely  promised 
and  vaguely  w^aited  for. 

We  shall  be  told  that  the  mediums  are  visited 
only  by  inferior  spirits,  incapable  of  tearing  them- 
selves from  earthly  cares  and  soaring  towards 
greater  and  loftier  ideas.  It  is  possible;  and  no 
doubt  we  are  wrong  to  believe  that  a  spirit  stripped 
of  its  body  can  suddenly  be  transformed  and  reach, 
in  a  moment,  the  level  of  our  imaginings ;  but  could 
they  not  at  least  inform  us  where  they  are,  what  they 
feel  and  what  they  do  ? 

4 
And  now  it  seems  that  death  itself  has  elected  to 


COMMUNICATIONS  WITH  DEAD  41 

answer  these  objections.  Frederic  Myers,  Richard 
Hodgson  and  WilHam  James,  who  so  often,  for 
long  and  ardent  hours,  questioned  Mrs.  Piper  and 
Mrs.  Thompson  and  obhged  the  departed  to  speak 
by  their  mouths,  are  now  themselves  among  the 
shades,  on  the  other  side  of  the  curtain  of  darkness. 
They  at  least  knew  exactly  what  to  do  in  order  to 
reach  us,  what  to  reveal  in  order  to  allay  the  uneasy 
curiosity  of  men.  Myers  in  particular,  the  most 
ardent,  the  most  convinced,  the  most  impatient  of 
the  veil  that  parted  him  from  the  eternal  realities, 
formally  promised  those  who  were  continuing  his 
work  that  he  would  make  every  imaginable  effort 
out  yonder,  in  the  unknown,  to  come  to  their  aid  in 
a  decisive  fashion.  He  kept  his  word.  A  month 
after  his  death,  when  Sir  Oliver  Lodge  was  ques- 
tioning Mrs.  Thompson  in  her  trance,  Nelly,  the 
medium's  familiar  spirit,  suddenly  declared  that  she 
had  seen  Myers,  that  he  was  not  yet  fully  awake, 
but  that  he  hoped  to  come,  at  nine  o'clock  in  the 
evening,  and  "communicate"  with  his  old  friend  of 
the  Psychical  Society. 

The  sitting  was  suspended  and  resumed  at  half 
past  eight;  and  Myers'  "communication"  was  at 
last  obtained.     He  was  recognised  by  the  first  few 


42  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

words  he  spoke;  it  was  really  he;  he  had  not 
changed.  Faithful  to  his  idiosyncrasy  when  on 
earth,  he  at  once  insisted  on  the  necessity  for  taking 
notes.  But  he  seemed  dazed.  They  spoke  to  him 
of  the  Society  for  Psychical  Research,  the  sole  in- 
terest of  his  life.  He  had  lost  all  recollection  of 
it.  Then  memory  gradually  revived;  and  there 
followed  a  quantity  of  post-mortem  gossip  on  the 
subject  of  the  society's  next  president,  the  obituary 
article  in  the  Times,  the  letters  that  should  be  pub- 
lished and  so  on.  He  complained  that  people 
would  not  let  him  rest,  that  there  was  not  a  place  in 
England  where  they  did  not  ask  for  him: 

"Call  Myers !     Bring  Myers !" 

He  ought  to  be  given  time  to  collect  himself,  to 
reflect.  He  also  complained  of  the  difficulty  of 
conveying  his  ideas  through  the  mediums:  "they 
were  translating  like  a  schoolboy  does  his  first  lines 
of  Virgil."  ^  As  for  his  present  condition,  "he 
groped  his  way  as  if  through  passages,  before  he 
knew  he  was  dead.  He  thought  he  had  lost  his  way 
in  a  strange  town  .  .  .  and,  even  when  he   saw 

^  In  this  and  other  "communications,"  I  have  quoted  the  actual 
English  words  employed,  whenever  I  have  been  able  to  discover 
them. — Translator. 


COMMUNICATIONS  WITH  DEAD  43 

people  that  he  knew  were  dead,  he  thought  they 
were  only  visions." 

This,  together  with  more  chatter  of  a  no  less 
trivial  nature,  is  about  all  that  we  obtained  from 
Myers'  "control"  or  "impersonation,"  of  which 
better  things  had  been  expected.  The  "communi- 
cation" and  many  others  which,  it  appears,  recall 
in  a  striking  fashion  Myers'  habits,  character  and 
ways  of  thinking  and  speaking  would  possess  some 
value  if  none  of  those  by  whom  or  to  whom  they 
were  made  had  been  acquainted  with  him  at  the 
time  when  he  was  still  numbered  among  the  living. 
As  they  stand,  they  are  most  probably  but  reminis- 
cences of  a  secondary  personality  of  the  medium  or 
unconscious  suggestions  of  the  questioner  or  the 
sitters. 

5 

A  more  important  communication  and  a  more 
perplexing,  because  of  the  names  connected  with 
it,  is  that  which  is  known  as  "]Mrs.  Piper's  Hodg- 
son-Control." Professor  William  James  devotes 
an  account  of  over  a  hundred  and  twenty  pages  to 
it  in  Vol.  XXIII.  of  the  Proceedings.  Dr.  Hodg- 
son, in  his  lifetime,  was  secretary  of  the  American 


44  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

branch  of  the  S.P.R.,  of  which  Wilham  James  was 
vice-president.     For  many  years,  he  devoted  him- 
self to  Mrs.  Piper  the  medium,  working  with  her 
twice  a  week  and  thus  accumulating  an  enormous 
mass  of  documents  on  the  subject  of  posthumous 
manifestations,  a  mass  whose  wealth  has  not  yet 
been  exhausted.    Like  Myers,  he  had  promised  to 
come  back  after  his  death;  and,  in  his  jovial  way, 
he  had  more  than  once  declared  to  Mrs.  Piper  that, 
when  he  came  to  visit  her  in  his  turn,  as  he  had  more 
experience  than  the  other  spirits,  the  sittings  would 
take  a  more  decisive  shape  and  that  "he  would  make 
it  hot  for  them."     He  did  come  back,  a  week  after 
his   death,   and  manifested  himself  by  automatic 
writing  (which,  with  Mrs.  Piper  as  medium,  was 
the  most  usual  method  of  communication)   during 
several  sittings  at  which  William  James  was  pres- 
ent.    I  should  like  to  give  an  idea  of  these  manifes- 
tations.   But,  as  the  celebrated  Harvard  professor 
very  truly  observes,  the  shorthand  report  of  a  sit- 
ting of  this  kind  at  once  alters  its  aspect  from  start 
to  finish.     We  seek  in  vain  for  the  emotion  experi- 
enced on  thus  finding  yourself  in  the  presence  of  an 
invisible  but  living  being,  who  not  only  answers 
your  questions,  but  anticipates  your  thoughts,  un- 


COMMUNICATIONS  WITH  DEAD  45 

derstands  before  you  have  finished  speaking,  grasps 
an  allusion  and  caps  it  with  another  allusion,  grave 
or  smiling.  The  life  of  the  dead  man,  which,  dur- 
ing a  strange  hour,  had,  so  to  speak,  surrounded 
and  penetrated  you,  seems  to  be  extinguished  for 
the  second  time.  Stenography,  which  is  devoid  of 
all  emotion,  no  doubt  supplies  the  best  elements  for 
arriving  at  a  logical  conclusion ;  but  it  is  not  certain 
that  here,  as  in  many  other  cases  where  the  unknown 
predominates,  logic  is  the  only  road  that  leads  to  the 
truth. 

"When  I  first  undertook,"  says  William  James, 
"to  collate  this  series  of  sittings  and  make  the  pres- 
ent report,  I  supposed  that  my  verdict  would  be 
determined  by  pure  logic.  Certain  minute  inci- 
dents, I  thought,  ought  to  make  for  spirit-return 
or  against  it  in  a  'crucial'  way.  But  watching  my 
mind  work  as  it  goes  over  the  data,  convinces  me 
that  exact  logic  plays  only  a  preparatory  part  in 
shaping  our  conclusions  here ;  and  that  the  decisive 
vote,  if  there  be  one,  has  to  be  cast  by  what  I  may 
call  one's  general  sense  of  dramatic  probability, 
which  sense  ebbs  and  flows  from  one  hypothesis  to 
another — it  does  so  in  the  present  writer  at  least — 
in  a  rather  illogical  manner.     If  one  sticks  to  the 


46  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

detail,  one  may  draw  an  anti-spiritist  conclusion; 
if  one  thinks  more  of  what  the  whole  mass  may 
signify,  one  may  well  incline  to  spiritist  interpre- 
tations." ^ 

And,  at  the  end  of  his  article,  he  sums  up  in  the 
following  words : 

"Z  myself  feel  as  if  an  external  will  to  communi- 
cate were  probably  there,  that  is,  I  find  myself 
doubting,  in  consequence  of  my  whole  acquaintance 
with  that  sphere  of  phenomena,  that  Mrs.  Piper's 
dream-life,  even  equipped  with  'telepathic'  powers, 
accounts  for  all  the  results  found.  But  if  asked 
whether  the  will  to  communicate  be  Hodgson's,  or 
be  some  mere  spirit-counterfeit  of  Hodgson,  I  re- 
main uncertain  and  await  more  facts,  facts  which 
may  not  point  clearly  to  a  conclusion  for  fifty  or  a 
hundred  years."  ^ 

As  we  see,  William  James  is  inclined  to  waver; 
and  at  certain  points  in  his  account  he  appears  to 
waver  still  more  and  indeed  to  say  deliberately  that 
the  spirits  "have  a  finger  in  the  pie."  These  hesi- 
tations on  the  part  of  a  man  who  has  revolutionised 
our  psychological  ideas  and  who  possessed  a  brain 

^Proceedings,  Vol.  XXIII.,  p.  33. 
''Ibid,  p.  120. 


COMMUNICATIONS  WITH  DEAD  47 

as  wonderfully  organised  and  well-balanced  as  that 
or  our  own  Taine,  for  instance,  are  very  significant. 
As  a  doctor  of  medicine  and  a  professor  of  philoso- 
phy, sceptical  by  nature  and  scrupulously  faithful 
to  experimental  methods,  he  was  thrice  qualified  to 
conduct  investigations  of  this  kind  to  a  successful 
conclusion.  It  is  not  a  question  of  allowing  our- 
selves, in  our  turn,  to  be  unduly  influenced  by  those 
hesitations;  but,  in  any  case,  they  show  that  the 
problem  is  a  serious  one,  the  gravest,  perhaps,  if 
the  facts  were  beyond  dispute,  which  we  have  had 
to  solve  since  the  coming  of  Christ;  and  that  we 
must  not  expect  to  dismiss  it  with  a  shrug  or  a 
laugh. 

6 

I  am  obliged,  for  lack  of  space,  to  refer  those  who 
wish  to  form  an  opinion  of  their  own  on  the  "Piper- 
Hodgson"  case  to  the  text  of  the  Proceedings.  The 
case,  at  the  same  time,  is  far  from  being  one  of  the 
most  striking;  it  should  rather  be  classed,  were  it 
not  for  the  importance  of  the  sitters  concerned, 
among  the  minor  successes  of  the  Piper  series. 
Hodgson,  according  to  the  invariable  custom  of  the 
spirits,  is,  first  of  all,  bent  on  making  himself  recog- 


48  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

nised;  and  the  inevitable,  tedious  string  of  trifling 
reminiscences  begins  twenty  times  over  again  and 
fills  page  after  page.  As  usual  in  such  instances, 
the  recollections  common  to  both  the  questioner  and 
the  spirit  who  is  supposed  to  be  replying  are 
brought  out  in  their  most  circumstantial,  their  most 
insignificant  and  also  their  most  private  details  with 
astonishing  eagerness,  precision  and  vivacity.  And 
observe  that,  for  all  these  details,  which  he  discloses 
with  such  extraordinary  facility,  the  dead  man 
answering  seeks  by  preference,  one  would  say,  the 
most  hidden  and  forgotten  treasures  of  the  living 
listener's  memory.  He  spares  him  nothing;  he 
harps  on  everything  with  childish  satisfaction  and 
apprehensive  solicitude,  not  so  much  to  persuade 
others  as  to  prove  to  himself  that  he  still  exists. 
And  the  obstinacy  of  this  poor  invisible  being,  in 
striving  to  manifest  himself  through  the  hitherto 
uncrannied  doors  that  separate  us  from  our  eternal 
destinies,  is  at  once  ridiculous  and  tragic: 

"Do  you  remember,  William,  when  we  were  in 
the  country  at  So-and-so's,  that  game  we  played 
with  the  children;  do  you  remember  my  saying 
such-and-such  a  thing  when  I  was  in  that  room 
where  there  was  such-and-such  a  chair  or  table?" 


COMMUNICATIONS  WITH  DEAD  49 

"Why,  yes,  Hodgson,  I  do  remember  now." 

"A  good  test,  that?" 

"First-rate,  Hodgson!" 

And  so  on,  indefinitely.  Sometimes,  there  is  a 
more  significant  incident  that  seems  to  surpass  the 
mere  transmission  of  subliminal  thought.  They  are 
talking,  for  instance,  of  a  frustrated  marriage  which 
was  always  surrounded  with  great  mystery,  even  to 
Hodgson's  most  intimate  friends : 

"Do  you  remember  a  lady-doctor  in  New  York, 
a  member  of  our  society?" 

"No,  but  what  about  her?" 

"Her  husband's  name  was  Blair  ...  I  think." 

"Do  you  mean  Dr.  Blair  Thaw?" 

"Oh,  yes.  Ask  Mrs.  Thaw  if  I  did  not  at  a  din- 
ner-party mention  something  about  the  lady.  I 
may  have  done  so." 

James  writes  to  Mrs.  Thaw,  who  declares  that,  as 
a  matter  of  fact,  fifteen  years  before,  Hodgson  had 
said  to  her  that  he  had  just  proposed  to  a  girl  and 
been  refused.  Mrs.  Thaw  and  Dr.  Newbold  were 
the  only  people  in  the  world  who  knew  the  par- 
ticulars. 

But  to  come  to  the  further  sittings.  Among  other 
points   discussed   is  the   financial   position   of  the 


50  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

American  branch  of  the  S.P.R.,  a  position  which, 
at  the  death  of  the  secretary,  or  rather  factotum, 
Hodgson,  was  anything  but  briUiant.  And  be- 
hold the  somewhat  strange  spectacle  of  different 
members  of  the  society  debating  its  affairs  with 
their  defunct  secretary.  Shall  they  dissolve?  Shall 
they  amalgamate?  Shall  they  send  the  materials 
collected,  most  of  which  are  Hodgson's,  to  Eng- 
land? They  consult  the  dead  man;  he  replies, 
gives  good  advice,  seems  fully  aware  of  all  the  com- 
plications, all  the  difficulties.  One  day,  in  Hodg- 
son's lifetime,  when  the  society  was  found  to  be 
short  of  funds,  an  anonymous  donor  had  sent  the 
sum  necessary  to  relieve  it  from  embarrassment. 
Hodgson  alive  did  not  know  who  the  donor  was; 
Hodgson  dead  picks  him  out  among  those  present, 
addresses  him  by  name  and  thanks  him  publicly. 
On  another  occasion,  Hodgson,  like  all  the  spirits, 
complains  of  the  extreme  difficulty  which  he  finds 
in  conveying  his  thought  through  the  alien  organ- 
ism of  the  medium: 

"I  find  now  difficulties  such  as  a  blind  man  would 
experience  in  trying  to  find  his  hat,"  he  says. 

But,  when,  after  so  much  idle  chatter,  William 
James  at  last  puts  the  essential  questions  that  burn 


COMMUNICATIONS  WITH  DEAD  51 

our  lips — "Hodgson,  what  have  you  to  tell  us  about 
the  other  life?" — the  dead  man  becomes  shifty  and 
does  nothing  but  seek  evasions : 

"It  is  not  a  vague  fantasy  but  a  reality,"  he 
replies. 

"But,"  Mrs.  William  James  insists,  "do  you  live 
as  we  do,  as  men  do?" 

"What  does  she  say?"  asks  the  spirit,  pre- 
tending not  to  understand. 

"Do  you  live  as  men  do?"  repeats  William 
James. 

"Do  you  wear  clothing  and  live  in  houses?"  adds 
his  wife. 

"Oh  yes,  houses,  but  not  clothing.  No,  that  is 
absurd.  Just  wait  a  moment,  I  am  going  to  get 
out." 

"You  will  come  back  again?" 

"Yes." 

"He  has  got  to  go  out  and  get  his  breath,"  re- 
marks another  spirit,  named  Rector,  suddenly  in- 
tervening. 

It  has  not  been  waste  of  time,  perhaps,  to  repro- 
duce the  general  features  of  one  of  these  sittings 
which  may  be  regarded  as  typical.  I  will  add,  in 
order  to  give  an  idea  of  the  farthest  point  which  it  is 


52  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

possible  to  attain,  the  following  instance  of  an 
experiment  made  by  Sir  Oliver  Lodge  and  related 
by  him.  He  handed  Mrs.  Piper,  in  her  "trance," 
a  gold  watch  which  had  just  been  sent  him  by  one 
of  his  uncles  and  which  belonged  to  that  uncle's 
twin  brother,  who  had  died  twenty  years  before. 
When  the  watch  was  in  her  possession,  Mrs.  Piper, 
or  rather  Phinuit,  one  of  her  familiar  spirits,  began 
to  relate  a  host  of  details  concerning  the  childhood 
of  this  twin  brother,  facts  dating  back  for  more  than 
sixty-six  years  and  of  course  unknown  to  Sir  Oliver 
Lodge.  Soon  after,  the  surviving  uncle,  who  lived 
in  another  town,  wrote  and  confirmed  the  accuracy 
of  most  of  these  details,  which  he  had  quite  forgot- 
ten and  of  which  he  was  only  now  reminded  by  the 
medium's  revelations;  while  those  which  he  could 
not  recollect  at  all  were  subsequently  declared  to 
be  in  accordance  with  fact  by  a  third  uncle,  an  old 
sea-captain,  who  lived  in  Cornwall  and  who  had  not 
the  least  notion  why  such  strange  questions  were 
put  to  him. 

I  quote  this  instance  not  because  it  has  any  ex- 
ceptional or  decisive  value,  but  simply,  I  repeat,  by 
way  of  an  example;  for,  like  the  case  connected 
with  Mrs.  Thaw,  mentioned  above,  it  marks  pretty 


COMMUNICATIONS  WITH  DEAD  53 

accurately  the  extreme  points  to  which  people  have 
up  to  now,  thanks  to  spirit  agency,  penetrated  the 
mysteries  of  the  unknown.  It  is  well  to  add  that 
cases  in  which  the  suj^posed  limits  of  the  most  far- 
reaching  telepathy  are  so  manifestly  exceeded  are 
fairly  uncommon. 

7 

Now  what  are  we  to  think  of  all  this  ?  Must  we, 
with  Myers,  Newbold,  Hyslop,  Hodgson  and  many 
others,  who  studied  this  problem  at  length,  conclude 
in  favour  of  the  incontestable  agency  of  forces  and 
intelligences  returning  from  the  farther  bank  of  the 
great  river  which  it  was  deemed  that  none  might 
cross.  ^lust  we  acknowledge  with  them  that  there 
are  cases  ever  more  numerous  which  make  it  impos- 
sible for  us  to  hesitate  any  longer  between  the  tele- 
pathic theory  and  the  spiritualistic  theory?  I  do 
not  think  so.  I  have  no  prejudices — what  were  the 
use  of  having  any,  in  these  mysteries? — no  reluct- 
ance to  admit  the  survival  and  the  intervention  of 
the  dead ;  but  it  is  wise  and  necessary,  before  leav- 
ing the  terrestrial  plane,  to  exhaust  all  the  supposi- 
tions, all  the  explanations  there  to  be  discovered. 
We  have  to  make  our  choice  between  two  manifes- 
tations of  the  unknown,  two  miracles,  if  you  prefer, 


54  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

whereof  one  is  situated  in  the  world  which  we 
inhabit  and  the  other  in  a  region  which,  rightly  or 
wrongly,  we  believe  to  be  separated  from  us  by 
nameless  spaces  which  no  human  being,  alive  or 
dead,  has  crossed  to  this  day.  It  is  natural,  there- 
fore, that  we  should  stay  in  our  own  world,  as  long 
as  it  gives  us  a  foothold,  as  long  as  we  are  not  piti- 
lessly expelled  from  it  by  a  series  of  irresistible  and 
irrefutable  facts  issuing  from  the  adjoining  abyss. 
The  survival  of  a  spirit  is  no  more  improbable  than 
the  prodigious  faculties  which  we  are  obliged  to  at- 
tribute to  the  mediums  if  we  deny  them  to  the  dead ; 
but  the  existence  of  the  medium,  contrary  to  that 
of  the  spirit,  is  unquestionable;  and  therefore  it  is 
for  the  spirit,  or  for  those  who  make  use  of  its  name, 
first  to  prove  that  it  exists. 

Do  the  extraordinary  phenomena  of  which  we 
know^ — transmission  of  thought  from  one  subcon- 
scious mind  to  another,  perception  of  events  at  a 
distance,  subliminal  clairvoyance — occur  when  the 
dead  are  not  in  evidence,  when  the  experiments  are 
being  made  exclusively  between  living  persons? 
This  cannot  be  honestly  contested.  Certainly  no 
one  has  ever  obtained  among  living  people  any 
series  of  communications  or  revelations  similar  to 


COMMUNICATIONS  WITH  DEAD   55 

those  of  the  great  spiritualistic  mediums,  Mrs. 
Piper,  Mrs.  Thompson  and  Stainton  Moses,  nor 
anything  that  can  compare  with  them  for  continuity 
or  lucidity.  But,  though  the  quality  of  the  phe- 
nomena will  not  bear  comparison,  it  cannot  be  de- 
nied that  their  inner  nature  is  identical.  Our  logical 
inference  is  that  the  real  cause  lies  not  in  the  source 
of  inspiration,  but  in  the  personal  value,  the  sensi- 
tiveness, the  power  of  the  medium.  For  the  rest, 
Mr.  J.  G.  Piddington,  who  devoted  an  exceedingly 
detailed  study  to  Mrs.  Thompson,  plainly  perceived 
in  her,  when  she  was  not  "entranced"  and  when 
there  were  no  spirits  whatever  in  question,  mani- 
festations inferior,  it  is  true,  but  absolutely  analo- 
gous to  those  involving  the  dead.^  These  mediums 
are  pleased,  in  all  good  faith  and  probably  uncon- 
sciously, to  give  to  their  subliminal  faculties,  to 
their  secondary  personalities,  or  to  accept,  on  their 
behalf,  names  which  were  borne  by  beings  who  have 
crossed  to  the  farther  side  of  the  mystery:  this  is  a 
matter  of  vocabulary  or  nomenclature  which  neither 

*  For  a  discussion  of  these  cases,  which  would  take  us  too  far  from 
our  subject,  see  Mr.  J.  G.  Piddington's  paper.  Phenomena  in  Mrs. 
Thompson's  Trance  (Proceedings,  Vol.  XVIII.,  pp.  180  et  seq.) ; 
also  Professor  A.  C.  Pigou's  article  in  Vol.  XXIII.  (Proceedings, 
pp.  286  et  seq.). 


56  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

lessens  nor  increases  the  intrinsic  significance  of  the 
facts.  Well,  in  examining  these  facts,  however 
strange  and  really  unparalleled  some  of  them  may 
be,  I  never  find  one  which  proceeds  frankly  from 
this  world  or  which  comes  indisputably  from  the 
other.  They  are,  if  you  wish,  phenomenal  border 
incidents;  but  it  cannot  be  said  that  the  border  has 
been  violated.  In  the  story  of  Sir  Oliver  Lodge's 
watch,  for  instance,  which  is  one  of  the  most  charac- 
teristic and  one  which  carries  us  farther  than  most, 
we  must  attribute  to  the  medium  faculties  that  have 
ceased  to  be  human.  She  must  have  put  herself  in 
touch,  whether  by  perception  of  events  at  a  distance, 
or  by  transmission  of  thought  from  one  subconscious 
mind  to  another,  or  again  by  subliminal  clairvoy- 
ance, with  the  two  surviving  brothers  of  the 
deceased  owner  of  the  watch ;  and,  in  the  past  sub- 
consciousness of  those  two  brothers,  distant  from 
each  other,  she  had  to  rediscover  a  host  of  circum- 
stances which  they  themselves  had  forgotten  and 
which  lay  hidden  beneath  the  heaped-up  dust  and 
darkness  of  six-and-sixty  years.  It  is  certain  that 
a  phenomenon  of  this  kind  passes  the  bounds  of 
the  imagination  and  that  we  should  refuse  to  credit 


COMMUNICATIONS  WITH  DEAD  57 

it  if,  first  of  all,  the  experiment  had  not  been  con- 
trolled and  certified  by  a  man  of  the  standing  of 
Sir  Oliver  Lodge  and  if,  moreover,  it  did  not  form 
one  of  a  group  of  equally  significant  facts  which 
clearly  show  that  we  are  not  here  concerned  with  an 
absolutely  unique  miracle  or  with  an  unlioped-for 
and  unprecedented  concourse  of  coincidences.  It 
is  simply  a  matter  of  distant  perception,  subliminal 
clairvoj^ance  and  telepathy  raised  to  the  highest 
power ;  and  these  three  manifestations  of  the  unex- 
plored depths  of  man  are  to-day  recognised  and 
classified  by  science,  which  is  not  saying  that  they 
are  explained :  that  is  another  question.  When,  in 
connection  with  electricity,  we  use  such  terms  as 
positive,  negative,  induction,  potential  and  resist- 
ance, we  are  also  applying  conventional  words  to 
facts  and  phenomena  of  whose  inward  essence  we 
are  utterly  ignorant ;  and  we  must  needs  be  content 
with  these,  pending  any  better.  There  is,  I  insist, 
between  these  extraordinary  manifestations  and 
those  given  to  us  by  a  medium  who  is  not  speaking 
in  the  name  of  the  dead,  but  a  difference  of  the 
greater  and  the  lesser,  a  difFerence  of  extent  or 
degree  and  in  no  wise  a  difference  in  kind. 


58  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

8 

For  the  proof  to  be  more  decisive,  it  would  be 
necessary  that  no  one,  neither  the  medium  nor  the 
witnesses,  should  ever  have  known  of  the  existence 
of  him  whose  past  is  revealed  by  the  dead  man,  in 
other  words,  that  every  living  link  should  be  elimin- 
ated. I  do  not  believe  that  this  has  actually  oc- 
curred up  to  the  present,  nor  even  that  it  is  possible ; 
in  any  case,  it  would  be  very  difficult  to  control  such 
an  experiment.  Be  this  as  it  may.  Dr.  Hodgson, 
who  devoted  part  of  his  life  to  the  quest  of  specific 
phenomena  wherein  the  boundaries  of  mediumistic 
power  should  be  plainly  overstepped,  believes  that 
he  found  them  in  certain  cases,  of  which — as  the 
others  were  of  very  much  the  same  nature — I  will 
merely  mention  one  of  the  most  striking.^  In  the 
course  of  excellent  sittings  with  Mrs.  Piper  the 
medium,  he  communicated  with  various  dead  friends 
who  reminded  him  of  a  large  number  of  common 
memories.  The  medium,  the  spirits  and  he  himself 
seemed  in  a  wonderfully  accommodating  mood ;  and 
the  revelations  were  plentiful,  exact  and  easy.  In 
this  extremely  favourable  atmosphere,  he  was 
placed  in  communication  with  the  soul  of  one  of  his 

^Proceedings,  Vol.  XIII.,  pp.  349-350  and  375. 


COMMUNICATIONS  WITH  DEAD  59 

best  friends,  who  had  died  a  year  before  and  whom 
he  simply  calls  "A."  This  A,  whom  he  had  known 
more  intimately  than  most  of  the  spirits  with  whom 
he  had  communicated  previously,  behaved  quite 
differently  and,  while  establishing  his  identity  be- 
yond dispute,  vouchsafed  only  incoherent  replies. 
Now  A  "had  been  troubled  much,  for  years  before 
his  death,  by  headaches  and  occasional  mental  ex- 
haustion, though  not  amounting  to  positive  mental 
disturbance." 

The  same  phenomenon  appears  to  recur  whenever 
similar  troubles  have  come  before  death,  as  in  cases 
of  suicide. 

"If  the  telepathic  explanation  is  held  to  be  the 
only  one,"  says  Dr.  Hodgson  (I  give  the  gist  of  his 
observations),  "if  it  is  claimed  that  all  the  com- 
munications of  these  discarnate  minds  are  only 
suggestions  from  my  subconscious  self,  it  is  unintel- 
ligible that,  after  having  obtained  satisfactory  re- 
sults from  others  whom  I  had  known  far  less 
intimately  than  A  and  with  whom  I  had  conse- 
quently far  fewer  recollections  in  common,  I  should 
get  from  him,  in  the  same  sittings,  nothing  but  in- 
coherencies.  I  am  thus  driven  to  believe  that  my 
subliminal  self  is  not  the  only  thing  in  evidence. 


60  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

that  it  is  in  the  presence  of  a  real,  hving  personality, 
whose  mental  state  is  the  same  as  it  was  at  the 
hour  of  death,  a  personality  which  remains  indepen- 
dent of  my  subliminal  consciousness  and  absolutely 
unaffected  by  it,  which  is  deaf  to  its  suggestions 
and  draws  from  its  own  resources  the  revelations 
which  it  makes." 

The  argument  is  not  without  value,  but  its  full 
force  would  be  obtained  only  if  it  were  certain  that 
none  of  those  present  knew  of  A's  madness ;  other- 
wise it  can  be  contended  that,  the  notion  of  madness 
having  penetrated  the  subconscious  intelligence  of 
one  of  them,  it  worked  upon  it  and  gave  to  the 
replies  induced  a  form  in  keeping  with  the  state  of 
mind  presupposed  in  the  dead  man. 

9 

Of  a  truth,  by  extending  the  possibilities  of  the 
medium  to  these  extremes,  we  furnish  ourselves 
with  explanations  which  forestall  nearly  every- 
thing, bar  every  road  and  all  but  deny  to  the  spirits 
any  power  of  manifesting  themselves  in  the  manner 
which  they  appear  to  have  chosen.  But  why  do 
they  choose  that  manner?  Why  do  they  thus  re- 
strict themselves?    Why  do  they  jealously  hug  the 


COMMUNICATIONS  WITH  DEAD  61 

narrow  strip  of  territory  which  memory  occupies 
on  the  confines  of  both  worlds  and  from  which  none 
but  indecisive  or  questionable  evidence  can  reach 
us?  Are  there  then  no  other  outlets,  no  other 
horizons?  Why  do  they  tarry  around  us,  stagnant 
in  their  little  pasts,  when,  in  their  freedom  from  the 
flesh,  they  ought  to  be  able  to  wander  at  ease  over 
the  virgin  stretches  of  space  and  time?  Do  they 
not  yet  know  that  the  sign  which  will  prove  to  us 
that  they  survive  is  to  be  found  not  with  us,  but 
with  them,  on  the  other  side  of  the  grave?  Why  do 
they  come  back  with  empty  hands  and  empty 
words  ?  Is  that  what  one  finds  when  one  is  steeped 
in  infinity?  Beyond  our  last  hour  is  it  all  bare  and 
shapeless  and  dim?  If  it  be  so,  let  them  tell  us; 
and  the  evidence  of  the  darkness  will  at  least  pos- 
sess a  grandeur  that  is  all  too  absent  from  these 
cross-examining  methods.  Of  what  use  is  it  to  die, 
if  all  life's  trivialities  continue?  Is  it  really  worth 
while  to  have  passed  through  the  terrifying  gorges 
which  open  on  the  eternal  fields,  in  order  to  remem- 
ber that  we  had  a  great-uncle  called  Peter  and  that 
our  Cousin  Paul  was  afflicted  with  varicose  veins 
and  a  gastric  complaint?  At  that  rate,  I  should 
choose  for  those  whom  I  love  the  august  and  frozen 


62  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

solitudes  of  the  everlasting  nothing.  Though  it  be 
difficult  for  them,  as  they  complain,  to  make  them- 
selves understood  through  a  strange  and  sleep- 
bound  organism,  they  tell  us  enough  categorical  de- 
tails about  the  past  to  show  that  they  could  disclose 
similar  details,  if  not  about  the  future,  which  they 
perhaps  do  not  yet  know,  at  least  about  the  lesser 
mysteries  which  surround  us  on  every  side  and 
which  our  body  alone  prevents  us  from  approach- 
ing. There  are  a  thousand  things,  large  or  small, 
alike  unknown  to  us,  which  we  must  perceive  when 
feeble  eyes  no  longer  arrest  our  vision.  It  is  in 
those  regions  from  which  a  shadow  separates  us  and 
not  in  foolish  title-tattle  of  the  past  that  they  would 
at  last  find  the  clear  and  genuine  proof  which  they 
seem  to  seek  with  such  enthusiasm.  Without  de- 
manding a  great  miracle,  one  would  nevertheless 
think  that  we  had  the  right  to  expect  from  a  mind 
which  nothing  now  enthrals  some  other  discourse 
than  that  which  it  avoided  when  it  was  still  subject 
to  matter. 


IV 
OUR    ULTIMATE    CONSCIOUSNESS 


IV 
OUR    ULTIMATE    CONSCIOUSNESS 


SURVIVAL  with  our  present  consciousness 
is  nearly  as  impossible  and  nearly  as  incom- 
prehensible as  total  annihilation.  More- 
over, even  if  it  were  admissible,  it  could  not  be 
dreadful.  This  is  certain  that,  when  the  body  dis- 
appears, all  physical  sufferings  will  disappear  at  the 
same  time ;  for  we  cannot  imagine  a  spirit  suffering 
in  a  body  which  it  no  longer  possesses.  With  them 
will  vanish  simultaneously  all  that  we  call  mental 
or  moral  sufferings,  seeing  that  all  of  them,  if  we 
examine  them  well,  spring  from  the  ties  and  habits 
of  our  senses.  Our  spirit  feels  the  reaction  of  the 
sufferings  of  our  body  or  of  the  bodies  that  sur- 
round it;  it  cannot  suffer  in  itself  or  through  itself. 
Slighted  affection,  shattered  love,  disappointments, 
failures,  despair,  betrayal,  personal  hmniliations, 
as  well  as  the  sorrows  and  the  loss  of  those  whom  it 
loves,  acquire  their  potent  sting  only  by  passing 
through  the  body  which  it  animates.     Outside  its 

65 


66  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

own  pain,  which  is  the  pain  of  not  knowing,  the 
spirit,  once  deHvered  from  its  flesh,  could  suffer 
only  in  the  recollection  of  the  flesh.  It  is  possible 
that  it  still  grieves  over  the  troubles  of  those  whom 
it  has  left  behind  on  earth.  But  to  its  eyes,  since  it 
no  longer  reckons  the  days,  these  troubles  will  seem 
so  brief  that  it  will  not  grasp  their  duration;  and, 
knowing  what  they  are  and  knowing  whither  they 
lead,  it  will  not  behold  their  severity. 

The  spu-it  is  insensible  to  all  that  is  not  happi- 
ness. It  is  made  only  for  infinite  joy,  which  is  the 
joy  of  knowing  and  understanding.  It  can  grieve 
only  at  perceiving  its  own  limits;  but  to  perceive 
those  limits,  when  there  are  no  more  bonds  to  space 
and  time,  is  already  to  transcend  them. 

2 

It  becomes  a  question  of  knowing  whether  that 
spirit,  sheltered  from  all  sorrow,  will  remain  itself, 
will  perceive  and  recognise  itself  in  the  bosom  of  in- 
finity and  up  to  what  point  it  is  important  that  it 
should  recognise  itself.  This  brings  us  to  the  pro- 
blems of  survival  without  consciousness,  or  survival 
with  a  consciousness  different  from  that  of  to-day 

Survival   without   consciousness   seems   at   first 


ULTIMATE  CONSCIOUSNESS      67 

sight  the  more  probable.  From  the  point  of  view 
of  the  good  or  ill  awaiting  us  on  the  other  side  of 
the  grave,  it  amounts  to  annihilation.  It  is  lawful, 
therefore,  for  those  who  prefer  the  easiest  solution 
and  the  most  consistent  with  the  present  state  of 
human  thought  to  limit  their  anxiety  to  that.  They 
have  nothing  to  dread;  for,  on  close  inspection, 
every  fear,  if  any  remained,  should  deck  itself  with 
hopes.  The  body  disintegrates  and  can  no  longer 
suffer;  the  mind,  separated  from  the  source  of 
pleasure  and  pain,  is  extinguished,  scattered  and 
and  lost  in  a  boundless  darkness ;  and  what  comes  is 
the  great  peace  so  often  prayed  for,  the  sleep  with- 
out measure,  without  dreams  and  without  awaken- 
ing. 

But  this  is  only  a  solution  that  fosters  indolence. 
If  we  press  those  who  speak  of  survival  without 
consciousness,  we  perceive  that  they  mean  only 
their  present  consciousness,  for  man  conceives  no 
other;  and  we  have  just  seen  that  it  is  almost  im- 
possible for  that  manner  of  consciousness  to  persist 
in  infinity. 

Unless,  indeed,  they  would  deny  every  sort  of 
consciousness,  even  that  cosmic  consciousness  into 
which  their  own  will  fall.     But  this  were  to  solve 


68  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

very  quickly  and  very  blindly,  with  a  stroke  of  the 
sword  in  the  night,  the  greatest  and  most  mysteri- 
ous question  that  can  arise  in  a  man's  brain. 

3 

It  is  evident  that,  in  the  depths  of  our  thought 
limited  on  every  side,  we  shall  never  be  able  to  form 
the  least  idea  of  an  infinite  consciousness.  There  is 
even  an  essential  antinomy  between  the  words  con- 
sciousness and  infinity.  To  speak  of  consciousness 
is  to  mean  the  most  definite  thing  conceivable  in  the 
finite ;  consciousness,  properly  speaking,  is  the  finite 
self -concentrated  in  order  to  discover  and  feel  its 
closest  limits,  to  the  end  that  it  may  enjoy  them  as 
closely  as  possibly.  On  the  other  hand,  it  is  impos- 
sible for  us  to  separate  the  idea  of  intelligence  from 
the  idea  of  consciousness.  Any  intelligence  that 
does  not  seem  capable  of  transforming  itself  into 
consciousness  becomes  for  us  a  mysterious  phenom- 
enon to  which  we  give  names  more  mysterious 
still,  lest  we  should  have  to  admit  that  we  under- 
stand nothing  of  it  at  all.  Now,  on  this  little  earth 
of  ours,  which  is  but  a  dot  in  space,  we  see  expended 
in  every  scale  of  life,  as  for  instance,  in  the  wonder- 
ful combinations  and  organisms  of  the  insect  world, 


ULTIMATE  CONSCIOUSNESS      69 

a  mass  of  intelligence  so  vast  that  our  human  in- 
telligence cannot  even  dream  of  assessing  it. 
Everj'thing  that  exists — and  man  first  of  all — is  in- 
cessantly drawing  upon  that  inexhaustible  reserve. 
.We  are  therefore  irresistibly  driven  to  ask  ourselves 
if  that  cosmic  intelligence  is  not  the  emanation  of 
an  infinite  consciousness,  or  if  it  must  not,  sooner  or 
later,  elaborate  one.  And  this  sets  us  tossing  be- 
tween two  irreducible  impossibilities.  What  is  most 
probable  is  that  here  again  we  are  judging  every- 
thing from  the  lowlands  of  our  anthropomorphism. 
At  the  sunmiit  of  our  infinitesimal  life,  we  see  only 
intelligence  and  consciousness,  the  extreme  point  of 
thought;  and  from  this  we  infer  that,  at  the  sum- 
mits of  all  lives,  there  could  be  naught  but  intelli- 
gence and  consciousness,  whereas  these  perhaps  oc- 
cupy only  an  inferior  place  in  the  hierarchy  of 
spiritual  or  other  possibilities. 

4 

Survival  absolutely  denuded  of  consciousness 
would,  therefore,  be  possible  only  if  we  deny  the 
existence  of  a  cosmic  consciousness.  When  once 
we  admit  this  consciousness,  under  whatsoever 
form,  we  are  bound  to  share  in  it;  and,  up  to  a  cer- 


70  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

tain  point,  the  question  is  indistinguishable  from 
that  of  the  continuance  of  a  more  or  less  modi- 
fied consciousness.  There  is,  for  the  moment,  no 
hope  of  solving  it;  but  we  are  free  to  grope  in  its 
darkness,  which  is  not  perhaps  equally  dense  at  all 
points. 

Here  begins  the  open  sea.  Here  begins  the 
splendid  adventure,  the  only  one  abreast  with 
human  curiosity,  the  only  one  that  soars  as  high  as 
its  highest  longing.  Let  us  accustom  ourselves  to 
regard  death  as  a  form  of  life  which  we  do  not  yet 
understand;  let  us  learn  to  look  upon  it  with  the 
same  eye  that  looks  upon  birth ;  and  soon  our  mind 
will  be  accompanied  to  the  steps  of  the  tomb  with 
the  same  glad  expectation  that  greets  a  birth. 

Suppose  that  a  child  in  its  mother's  womb  were 
endowed  with  a  certain  consciousness;  that  unborn 
twins,  for  instance,  could,  in  some  obscure  fashion, 
exchange  their  impressions  and  communicate  their 
hopes  and  fears  to  each  other.  Having  known 
naught  but  the  warm  maternal  shades,  they  would 
not  feel  straitened  nor  unhappy  there.  They  would 
probably  have  no  other  idea  than  to  prolong  as 
long  as  possible  that  life  of  abundance  free  from 
cares  and  of  sleep  free  from  alarms.    But,  if,  even 


ULTIMATE  CONSCIOUSNESS      71 

as  we  are  aware  that  we  must  die,  they  too  knew 
that  they  must  be  born,  that  is  to  say,  that  they 
must  suddenly  leave  the  shelter  of  that  gentle  dark- 
ness and  bandon  for  ever  that  captive  but  peaceful 
existence,  to  be  precipitated  into  an  absolutely 
different,  unimaginable  and  boundless  world,  how 
great  w^ould  be  their  anxieties  and  their  fears !  And 
yet  there  is  no  reason  why  our  own  anxieties  and 
fears  should  be  more  justified  or  less  ridiculous. 
The  character,  the  spirit,  the  intentions,  the  benevo- 
lence or  the  indifference  of  the  unknown  to  which 
we  are  subject  do  not  alter  between  our  birth  and 
our  death.  We  remain  always  in  the  same  infinity, 
in  the  same  universe.  It  is  perfectly  reasonable 
and  legitimate  to  persuade  ourselves  that  the  tomb 
is  no  more  dreadful  than  the  cradle.  It  would 
even  be  legitimate  and  reasonable  to  accept  the 
cradle  only  on  account  of  the  tomb.  If,  before 
being  born,  we  were  permitted  to  choose  between 
the  great  peace  of  non-existence  and  a  life  that 
should  not  be  completed  by  the  glorious  hour  of 
death,  which  of  us,  knowing  what  he  ought  to  know, 
would  accept  the  disquieting  problem  of  an  exist- 
ence that  would  not  lead  to  the  reassuring  mystery 
of  its  end?     Which  of  us  would  wish  to  come  into 


72  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

a  world  where  we  can  learn  so  little,  if  he  did  not 
know  that  he  must  enter  it  if  he  would  leave  it  and 
learn  more?  The  best  thing  about  life  is  that  it  pre- 
pares this  hour  for  us,  that  it  is  the  one  and  only 
road  leading  to  the  magic  gateway  and  into  that  in- 
comparable mj^stery  where  misfortunes  and  suffer- 
ings will  no  longer  be  possible,  because  we  shall  have 
lost  the  body  that  produced  them ;  where  the  worst 
that  can  befall  us  is  the  dreamless  sleep  which  we 
number  among  the  greatest  boons  on  earth ;  where, 
lastly,  it  is  almost  unimaginable  that  a  thought 
should  not  survive  to  mingle  with  the  substance  of 
the  universe,  that  is  to  say,  with  infinity,  which,  if 
it  be  not  a  waste  of  indifference  can  be  nothing  but 
a  sea  of  joy. 


Before  fathoming  that  sea,  let  us  remark  to  those 
who  aspire  to  maintain  their  ego  that  they  are  call- 
ing for  the  sufferings  which  they  dread.  The  ego 
implies  limits.  The  ego  cannot  subsist  except  in 
so  far  as  it  is  separated  from  that  which  surrounds 
it.  The  stronger  the  ego,  the  narrower  its  limits 
and  the  clearer  the  separation.  The  more  painful 
too;  for  the  mind,  if  it  remain  as  we  know  it — and 


ULTIMATE  CONSCIOUSNESS      73 

we  are  not  able  to  imagine  it  different — will  no 
sooner  have  seen  its  limits  than  it  will  wish  to  over- 
step them;  and,  the  more  separated  it  feels,  the 
greater  will  be  its  longing  to  unite  with  that  which 
lies  outside.  There  will  therefore  be  an  eternal 
struggle  between  its  being  and  its  aspirations.  And 
really  it  would  have  served  no  object  to  be  born  and 
die  only  to  arrive  at  these  interminable  contests. 
Have  we  not  here  yet  one  more  proof  that  our  ego, 
as  we  conceive  it,  could  never  subsist  in  the  infinity 
where  it  must  needs  go,  since  it  cannot  go  elsewhere? 
It  behoves  us  therefore  to  clear  away  conceptions 
that  emanate  only  from  our  body,  even  as  the  mists 
that  veil  the  daylight  from  our  sight  emanate  only 
from  the  lowlands.  Pascal  has  said,  once  and  for 
all: 

"The  narrow  limits  of  our  being  conceal  infinity 
from  our  view." 

6 

On  the  other  hand — for  we  must  keep  nothing 
back,  nor  turn  from  the  adverse  darkness  should  it 
seem  nearest  to  the  truth,  nor  show  any  bias — on 
the  other  hand,  we  can  grant  to  those  who  yearn  to 
remain  as  they  are  that  the  survivial  of  an  atom  of 


74  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

themselves  would  suffice  for  a  new  entrance  into  an 
infinity  from  which  their  body  no  longer  separates 
them. 

If  it  seems  impossible  that  anything — a  move- 
ment, a  vibration,  a  radiation — should  stop  or  dis- 
appear, why  then  should  thought  be  lost?  There 
will,  no  doubt,  subsist  more  than  one  idea  powerful 
enough  to  allure  the  new  ego,  which  will  nourish 
itself  and  thrive  on  all  that  it  will  find  in  that  bound- 
less environment,  just  as  the  other  ego,  on  this 
earth,  nourished  itself  and  throve  on  all  that  it  met 
there.  Since  we  have  been  able  to  acquire  our  pres- 
ent consciousness,  why  should  it  be  impossible  for  us 
to  acquire  another?  For  that  ego  which  is  so  dear 
to  us  and  which  we  believe  ourselves  to  possess  was 
not  made  in  a  day ;  it  is  not  at  present  what  it  was 
at  the  hour  of  our  birth.  Much  more  chance  than 
purpose  has  entered  into  it;  and  much  more  alien 
substance  than  any  inborn  substance  which  it  con- 
tained. It  is  but  a  long  series  of  acquisitions  and 
transformations,  of  which  we  do  not  become  aware 
until  the  awakening  of  our  memory;  and  its  kernel, 
of  which  we  do  not  know  the  nature,  is  perhaps 
more  immaterial  and  less  concrete  than  a  thought. 
If  the  new  environment  which  we  enter  on  leaving 


ULTIMATE  CONSCIOUSNESS      75 

our  mother's  womb  transforms  us  to  such  a  point 
that  there  is,  so  to  speak,  no  connection  between 
the  embryo  that  we  w^ere  and  the  man  that  we  have 
become,  is  it  not  right  to  think  that  the  far  newer, 
stranger,  wider  and  richer  environment  which  we 
enter  on  quitting  hfe  will  transform  us  even  more? 
We  can  see  in  what  happens  to  us  here  a  figure  of 
what  awaits  us  elsewhere  and  can  readily  admit  that 
our  spiritual  being,  liberated  from  its  body,  if  it 
does  not  mingle  at  the  first  onset  with  the  infinite, 
will  develop  itself  there  gradually,  will  choose  itself 
a  substance  and,  no  longer  trammelled  by  space  and 
time,  will  go  on  for  ever  growing.  It  is  very  possi- 
ble that  our  loftiest  wishes  of  to-day  will  become  the 
law  of  our  future  development.  It  is  very  possible 
that  our  best  thoughts  will  welcome  us  on  the  far- 
ther shore  and  that  the  quality  of  our  intellect  will 
determine  that  of  the  infinite  which  crystallises 
around  it.  Every  hypothesis  is  permissible  and 
every  question,  provided  it  be  addressed  to  happi- 
ness; for  unhappiness  is  no  longer  able  to  answer  us. 
It  finds  no  place  in  the  human  imagination  that 
methodically  explores  the  future^  And,  whatever 
be  the  force  that  survives  us  and  presides  over  our 
existence  in  the  other  world,  this  existence,  to  pre- 


76  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

sume  the  worst,  could  be  no  less  great,  no  less  happy 
than  that  of  to-day.  It  will  have  no  other  career 
than  infinity;  and  infinity  is  nothing  if  it  be  not 
felicity.  In  any  case,  it  seems  fairly  certain  that 
we  spend  in  this  world  the  only  narrow,  grudging, 
obscure  and  sorrowful  moment  of  our  destiny. 

7 

We  have  said  that  the  peculiar  sorrow  of  the  mind 
is  the  sorrow  of  not  knowing  or  not  understanding, 
which  includes  the  sorrow  of  being  powerless;  for 
he  who  knows  the  supreme  causes,  being  no  longer 
paralysed  by  matter,  becomes  one  with  them  and 
acts  with  them:  and  he  who  understands  ends  by 
approving,  or  else  the  universe  would  be  a  mistake, 
which  is  not  possible,  an  infinite  mistake  being  in- 
conceivable. I  do  not  believe  that  another  sorrow 
of  the  sheer  mind  can  be  imagined.  The  only  one 
sorrow  which,  at  first  thought,  might  seem  admis- 
sible— and  which,  in  any  case,  could  be  but  ephem- 
eral— would  arise  from  the  sight  of  the  pain  and 
misery  remaining  on  the  earth  which  we  have  left. 
But  this  sorrow,  after  all,  would  be  but  one  aspect 
and  an  insignificant  phase  of  the  sorrow  of  being 
powerless  and  of  not  understanding.     As  for  the 


ULTIMATE  CONSCIOUSNESS        77 

latter,  though  it  is  not  only  beyond  the  domain  of 
our  intelligence,  but  even  at  an  insuperable  dis- 
tance from  our  imagination,  we  may  say  that  it 
would  be  intolerable  only  if  it  were  without  hope. 
But,  for  that,  the  universe  would  have  to  abandon 
any  attempt  to  understand  itself,  or  else  admit 
within  itself  an  object  that  remained  for  ever  for- 
eign to  it.  Either  the  mind  will  not  perceive  its 
limits  and,  consequently,  will  not  suffer  from  them, 
or  else  it  will  overstep  them  as  it  perceives  them; 
for  how  could  the  universe  have  parts  eternally 
condemned  to  form  no  part  of  itself  and  of  its 
knowledge  ?  Hence  we  cannot  understand  that  the 
torture  of  not  understanding,  supposing  it  to  exist 
for  a  moment,  should  not  end  by  absorption  in  the 
state  of  infinity,  which,  if  it  be  not  happiness  as 
we  comprehend  it,  could  be  naught  but  an  indiffer- 
ence higher  and  purer  than  joy. 


V 

THE    TWO    ASPECTS    OF    INFINITY 


THE    TWO    ASPECTS    OF    INFINITY 


LET  us  turn  our  thoughts  towards  it.  The 
problem  goes  beyond  humanity  and  em- 
braces all  things.  It  is  possible,  I  think, 
to  view  infinity  under  two  distinct  aspects.  Let  us 
contemplate  the  first  of  them.  We  are  plunged  in 
a  universe  that  has  no  limits  in  space  or  time.  It 
can  neither  go  forward  nor  go  back.  It  has  no 
origin.  It  never  began,  nor  will  it  ever  end.  The 
myriads  of  years  behind  it  are  even  as  the  myriads 
which  it  has  yet  to  unroll.  From  all  time  it 
has  been  at  the  boundless  centre  of  the  days. 
It  could  have  no  aim,  for,  if  it  had  one,  it  would  have 
attained  it  in  the  infinity  of  the  years  that  lie  behind 
us;  besides,  that  aim  would  lie  outside  itself  and, 
if  anything  lay  outside  it,  infinity  would  be  bounded 
by  that  thing  and  would  cease  to  be  infinity.  It 
is  not  making  for  anywhere,  for  it  would  have  ar- 

81 


82  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

rived  there ;  consequently,  all  that  the  worlds  within 
its  pale,  all  that  we  ourselves  do  can  have  no  in- 
fluence upon  it.  All  that  it  will  do  it  has  done.  All 
that  it  has  not  done  remains  undone  because  it  can 
never  do  it.  If  it  have  no  mind,  it  will  never  have 
one.  If  it  have  one,  that  mind  has  been  at  its  cli- 
max from  all  time  and  will  remain  there,  change- 
less and  immovable.  It  is  as  young  as  it  has  ever 
been  and  as  old  as  it  will  ever  be.  It  has  made  in 
the  past  all  the  efforts  and  all  the  trials  which  it 
will  make  in  the  future ;  and,  as  all  the  possible  com- 
binations have  been  exhausted  since  what  we  can- 
not even  call  the  beginning,  it  does  not  seem  as  if 
that  which  has  not  taken  place  in  the  eternity  that 
stretches  before  our  birth  can  happen  in  the  eternity 
that  will  follow  our  death.  If  it  have  not  become 
conscious,  it  will  never  become  conscious ;  if  it  know 
not  what  it  wishes,  it  will  continue  in  ignorance, 
hopelessly,  knowing  all  or  knowing  nothing  and 
remaining  as  near  its  end  as  its  beginning. 

This  is  the  gloomiest  thought  to  which  man  can 
attain.  So  far,  I  do  not  think  that  its  depths  have 
been  sufficiently  sounded.  If  it  were  really  irrefu- 
table— and  some  may  contend  that  it  is — if  it  actu- 
ally contained  the  last  word  of  the  great  riddle,  it 


TWO  ASPECTS  OF  INFINITY      83 

would  be  almost  impossible  to  live  in  its  shadow. 
Naught  save  the  certainty  that  our  conceptions  of 
time  and  space  are  illusive  and  absurd  can  lighten 
the  abyss  wherein  our  last  hope  would  perish. 

2 

The  universe  thus  conceived  would  be,  if  not  in- 
telligible, at  least  admissible  by  our  reason;  but  in 
that  universe  float  billions  of  worlds  limited  by 
space  and  time.  They  are  born,  they  die  and  they 
are  born  again.  They  form  part  of  the  whole ;  and 
we  see,  therefore,  that  parts  of  that  which  has 
neither  beginning  nor  end  themselves  begin  and 
end.  We,  in  fact,  know  only  those  parts ;  and  they 
are  of  a  number  so  infinite  that  in  our  eyes  they  fill 
all  infinity.  That  which  is  going  nowhere  teems 
with  that  which  appears  to  be  going  somewhere. 
That  which  has  always  known  what  it  wants,  or  will 
never  learn,  seems  to  be  eternally  experimenting 
with  more  or  less  ill-success.  At  what  goal  is  it 
aiming,  since  it  is  already  there?  Everything  that 
we  discover  in  that  which  could  not  possibly  have  an 
object  looks  as  though  it  were  pursuing  one  with 
inconceivable  ardour;  and  the  mind  that  animates 
what  we  see,  in  that  which  should  know  everything 


84  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

and  possess  itself,  seems  to  know  nothing  and  to 
seek  itself  without  intermission.  Thus  all  that  is 
apparent  to  our  senses  in  infinity  gainsays  that 
which  our  reason  is  compelled  to  ascribe  to  it.  Ac- 
cording as  we  fathom  it,  we  come  to  understand  how 
deep  is  our  want  of  understanding;  and,  the  more 
we  strive  to  penetrate  the  two  incomprehensible 
problems  that  stand  face  to  face,  the  more  they  con- 
tradict each  other. 

3 
What  will  become  of  us  amid  all  this  confusion? 
Shall  we  leave  the  finite  wherein  we  dwell  to  be 
swallowed  up-  in  this  or  the  other  infinite  ?  In  other 
words,  shall  we  end  by  absorption  in  the  infinite 
which  our  reason  conceives,  or  shall  we  remain 
eternally  in  that  which  our  eyes  behold,  that  is  to 
say,  in  numberless  changing  and  ephemeral  worlds  ? 
Shall  we  never  leave  those  worlds  which  seem 
doomed  to  die  and  to  be  reborn  eternally,  to  enter  at 
last  into  that  which,  from  all  eternity,  can  neither 
have  been  born  nor  have  died  and  which  exists  with- 
out either  future  ar  past  ?  Shall  we  one  day  escape, 
with  all  that  surrounds  us,  from  this  unhappy  spec- 
ulation, to  find  our  way  at  last  into  peace,  wisdom, 
changeless    and   boundless   consciousness,    or   into 


TWO  ASPECTS  OF  INFINITY      85 

hopeless  unconsciousness?  Shall  we  have  the  fate 
which  our  senses  foretell,  or  that  which  our  intelli- 
gence demands?  Or  are  both  senses  and  intelli- 
gence only  illusions,  puny  implements,  vain  wea- 
pons of  an  hour,  which  were  never  intended  to  ex- 
amine or  defy  the  universe?  If  there  really  be  a 
contradiction,  is  it  wise  to  accept  it  and  deem  im- 
possible that  which  we  do  not  understand,  seeing 
that  we  understand  almost  nothing?  Is  truth  not  at 
an  immeasurable  distance  from  these  inconsistencies 
which  appear  to  us  enormous  and  irreducible  and 
which,  doubtless,  are  of  no  more  importance  than 
the  rain  that  falls  upon  the  sea? 

4 

But,  even  to  our  poor  understanding  of  to-day, 
the  discrepancy  between  the  infinity  conceived  by 
our  reason  and  that  perceived  by  our  senses  is 
perhaps  more  apparent  than  real.  When  we  say 
that,  in  a  universe  that  has  existed  since  all  eternity, 
every  experiment,  every  possible  combination  has 
been  made ;  when  we  declare  that  there  is  no  chance 
that  what  has  not  taken  place  in  the  immeasurable 
past  can  take  place  in  the  immeasurable  future,  our 
imagination  perhaps  attributes  to  the  infinity  of 


86  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

time  a  preponderance  which  it  cannot  possess.  In 
truth,  all  that  infinity  contains  must  be  as  infinite  as 
the  time  at  its  disposal ;  and  the  chances,  encounters 
and  combinations  that  lie  therein  have  not  been  ex- 
hausted in  the  eternity  that  has  gone  before  us  any 
more  than  they  could  be  in  the  eternity  that  will 
come  after  us.  The  infinity  of  time  is  no  vaster 
than  the  infinity  of  the  substance  of  the  universe. 
Events,  forces,  chances,  causes,  effects,  phenomena, 
fusions,  combinations,  coincidences,  harmonies, 
unions,  possibilities,  lives  are  represented  in  it  by 
countless  numbers  that  entirely  fill  a  bottomless 
and  vergeless  abyss  where  they  have  been  shaken 
together  from  what  we  call  the  beginning  of  the 
world  that  had  no  beginning  and  where  they  will  be 
stirred  up  until  the  end  of  a  world  that  will  have  no 
end.  There  is,  therefore,  no  climax,  no  changeless- 
ness,  no  immovability.  It  is  probable  that  the  uni- 
verse is  seeking  and  finding  itself  every  day,  that  it 
has  not  become  entirely  conscious  and  does  not  yet 
know  what  it  wants.  It  is  possible  that  its  ideal 
is  still  veiled  by  the  shadow  of  its  imniensity;  it  is 
also  possible  that  experiments  and  chances  are  fol- 
lowing one  upon  the  other  in  unimaginable  worlds, 
compared  wherewith  all  those  which  we  see  on  starry 


TWO  ASPECTS  OF  INFINITY       87 

nights  are  no  more  than  a  pinch  of  gold-dust  in  the 
ocean  depths.  Lastly,  if  either  be  true,  it  is  also 
true  that  we  ourselves,  or  what  remains  of  us — it 
matters  not — will  profit  one  day  by  those  experi- 
ments and  those  chances.  That  which  has  not  yet 
happened  may  suddenly  supervene;  and  the  next 
state,  with  the  supreme  wisdom  which  will  recognise 
and  be  able  to  establish  that  state,  is  perhaps  ready 
to  arise  from  the  clash  of  circumstances.  It  would 
not  be  at  all  astonishing  if  the  consciousness  of  the 
universe,  in  the  endeavour  to  form  itself,  had  not 
yet  encountered  the  combination  of  necessary 
chances  and  if  human  thought  were  actually  sup- 
porting one  of  those  decisive  chances.  Here  there 
is  a  hope.  Small  as  man  and  his  brain  may  appear, 
they  have  exactly  the  value  of  the  most  enormous 
forces  that  they  are  able  to  conceive,  since  there  is 
neither  great  nor  small  in  the  immensurable ;  and, 
if  our  body  equalled  the  dimensions  of  all  the  worlds 
which  our  eyes  can  see,  it  would  have  exactly  the 
same  weight  and  the  same  importance,  as  compared 
with  the  universe,  that  it  has  to-day.  The  mind 
alone  perhaps  occupies  in  infinity  a  space  which  com- 
parisons do  not  reduce  to  nothing. 


88  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

5 

For  the  rest,  if  everything  must  be  said,  at  the 
cost  of  constantly  and  shamelessly  contradicting 
one's  self  in  the  dark,  and  to  return  to  the  first  sup- 
position, the  idea  of  possible  progress,  it  is  extreme- 
ly probable  that  this  again  is  one  of  those  childish 
disorders  of  our  brain  which  prevent  us  from  see- 
ing the  thing  that  is.  It  is  quite  as  probable,  as 
we  have  seen  above,  that  there  never  was,  that  there 
never  will  be  any  progress,  because  there  could 
not  be  a  goal.  At  most  there  may  occur  a  few 
ephemeral  combinations  which,  to  our  poor  eyes, 
will  seem  happier  or  more  beautiful  than  the  others. 
Even  so  we  think  gold  more  beautiful  than  the  mud 
in  the  street,  or  the  flower  in  a  splendid  garden  hap- 
pier than  the  stone  at  the  bottom  of  a  drain ;  but  all 
this,  obviously,  is  of  no  importance,  has  no  corre- 
sponding reality  and  proves  nothing  in  particular. 

The  more  we  reflect  upon  it,  the  more  pronounced 
is  the  infirmity  of  our  intelligence  which  cannot  suc- 
ceed in  reconciling  the  idea  of  progress  and  even 
the  idea  of  experiment  with  the  supreme  idea  of  in- 
finity. Although  nature  has  been  incessantly  and 
indefatigably  repeating  herself  before  our  eyes  for 
thousands  of  years,  reproducing  the  same  trees  and 


TWO  ASPECTS  OF  INFINITY      89 

the  same  animals,  we  camiot  contrive  to  understand 
why  the  universe  indefinitely  recommences  experi- 
ments that  have  been  made  billions  of  times.  It  is 
inevitable  that,  in  the  innumerable  combinations 
that  have  been  and  are  being  made  in  termless  tune 
and  boundless  space,  there  have  been  and  still  are 
millions  of  planets  and  consequently  millions  of 
human  races  exactly  similar  to  our  own,  side  by  side 
with  myriads  of  others  more  or  less  different  from 
it.  Let  us  not  say  to  ourselves  that  it  would  require 
an  unimaginable  concourse  of  circumstances  to  re- 
produce a  globe  like  unto  our  earth  in  every  respect. 
We  must  remember  that  we  are  in  the  infinite  and 
that  this  unimaginable  concourse  must  necessarily 
take  place  in  the  innumerousness  which  we  are  un- 
able to  imagine.  Though  it  need  billions  and  bil- 
lions of  cases  for  two  features  to  coincide,  those  bil- 
lions and  billions  will  encumber  infinity  no  more 
than  would  a  single  case.  Place  an  infinite  number 
of  worlds  in  an  infinite  number  of  infinitely  diverse 
circumstances :  there  will  always  be  an  infinite  num- 
ber for  which  those  circumstances  will  be  alike;  if 
not,  we  should  be  setting  bounds  to  our  idea  of  the 
universe,  which  would  forthwith  become  more  in- 
comprehensible still.     From  the  moment  that  we 


90  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

insist  sufficiently  upon  that  thought,  we  necessarily 
arrive  at  these  conclusions.  If  they  have  not  struck 
us  hitherto,  it  is  because  we  never  go  to  the  farthest 
point  of  our  imagination.  Now  the  farthest  point 
of  our  imagination  is  but  the  begiiining  of  reality 
and  gives  us  only  a  small,  purely  human  universe, 
which,  vast  as  it  may  seem,  dances  in  the  real  uni- 
verse like  an  apple  on  the  sea.  I  repeat,  if  we  do 
not  admit  that  thousands  of  worlds,  similar  in  all 
points  to  our  own,  in  spite  of  the  billions  of  adverse 
chances,  have  always  existed  and  still  exist  to-day, 
we  are  sapping  the  foundations  of  the  only  possible 
conception  of  the  universe  or  of  infinity. 

6 

Now  how  is  it  that  those  millions  of  exactly  simi- 
lar human  races,  which  from  all  time  suffer  what 
we  have  suffered  and  are  still  suffering,  profit  us 
nothing,  that  all  their  experiences  and  all  their 
schools  have  had  no  influence  upon  our  first  efforts 
and  that  everything  has  to  be  done  again  and  begun 
again  incessantly? 

As  we  see,  the  two  theories  balance  each  other. 
It  is  well  to  acquire  by  degrees  the  habit  of  under- 
standing nothing.    There  remains  to  us  the  faculty 


TWO  ASPECTS  OF  INFINITY      91 

of  choosing  the  less  gloomy  of  the  two  or  persuad- 
ing ourselves  that  the  mists  of  the  other  exist  only 
in  our  brain.  As  that  strange  visionary,  William 
Blake,  said: 

"Nor  is  it  possible  to  thought 
A  greater  than  itself  to  know." 

Let  us  add  that  it  is  not  possible  for  it  to  know 
an}i;hing  other  than  itself.  What  we  do  not  know 
would  be  enough  to  create  the  world  afresh;  and 
what  we  do  know  cannot  add  one  moment  to  the  life 
of  a  fly.  Who  can  tell  but  that  our  chief  mistake 
lies  in  believing  that  an  intelligence,  were  it  an  in- 
telligence thousands  of  times  as  great  as  ours,  di- 
rects the  universe?  It  may  be  a  force  of  quite  an- 
other nature,  a  force  that  differs  as  widely  from  that 
on  which  our  brain  prides  itself  as  electricity,  for 
instance,  differs  from  the  wind  that  blows.  That 
is  why  it  is  fairly  probable  that  our  mind,  however 
powerful  it  become,  will  always  grope  in  mystery. 
If  it  be  certain  that  everj^thing  in  us  must  also  be 
in  nature,  because  everything  comes  to  us  from  her, 
if  the  mind  and  all  the  logic  which  it  has  placed  at 
the  culminating  point  of  our  being  direct  or  seem  to 
direct  all  the  actions  of  our  life,  it  by  no  means  fol- 


92  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

lows  that  there  is  not  in  the  universe  a  force  greatly 
superior  to  thought,  a  force  having  no  imaginable 
relation  to  the  mind,  a  force  which  animates  and 
governs  all  things  according  to  other  laws  and  of 
which  nothing  is  found  in  us  but  almost  imper- 
ceptible traces,  even  as  almost  imperceptible  traces 
of  thought  are  all  that  can  be  found  in  plants  and 
minerals. 

In  any  case,  there  is  nothing  here  to  make  us  rose 
courage.  It  is  necessarily  the  human  illusion  of  evil, 
ugliness,  uselessness  and  impossibility  that  is  to 
blame.  We  must  wait  not  for  the  universe  to  be 
transformed,  but  for  our  intelligence  to  expand  or 
to  take  part  in  the  other  force ;  and  we  must  main- 
tain our  confidence  in  a  world  which  knows  nothing 
of  our  conceptions  of  purpose  and  progress,  because 
it  doubtless  has  ideas  whereof  we  have  no  idea,  a 
world,  moreover,  which  could  scarcely  wish  itself 
harm. 

7 

"These  are  but  vain  speculations,"  it  will  be  said. 
"What  matters,  after  all,  the  idea  which  we  form  of 
those  things  which  belong  to  the  unknowable,  see- 
ing that  the  unknowable,  were  we  a  thousand  times 
as  intelligent  as  we  are,  is  closed  to  us  for  ever  and 


TWO  ASPECTS  OF  INFINITY      93 

that  the  idea  which  we  form  of  it  will  never  have 
any  value?" 

That  is  true;  but  there  are  degrees  in  our  igno- 
rance of  the  unknowable ;  and  each  of  these  degrees 
marks  a  triumph  of  the  intelligence.  To  estimate 
more  and  more  completely  the  extent  of  what  it  does 
not  know  is  all  that  man's  knowledge  can  hope  for. 
Our  idea  of  the  unknowable  was  and  always  will  be 
valueless,  I  admit;  but  it  nevertheless  is  and  will 
remain  the  most  important  idea  of  mankind.  All 
our  morality,  all  that  is  in  the  highest  degree  noble 
and  profound  in  our  existence  has  always  been 
based  on  this  idea  devoid  of  real  value.  To-day,  as 
yesterday,  even  though  it  be  possible  to  recognise 
more  clearly  that  it  is  too  incomplete  and  relative 
ever  to  have  any  actual  value,  it  is  necessary  to  carry 
it  as  high  and  as  far  as  we  can.  It  alone  creates  the 
only  atmosphere  wherein  the  best  part  of  ourselves 
can  live.  Yes,  it  is  the  unknowable  into  which  we 
shall  not  enter;  but  that  is  no  reason  for  saying  to 
ourselves : 

"I  am  closing  all  the  doors  and  all  the  windows; 
henceforth,  I  shall  interest  myself  only  in  things 
which  my  everyday  intelligence  can  compass.  Those 


94  THE  LIGITT  BEYOND 

things  alone  have  the  right  to  influence  my  actions 
and  my  thoughts." 

Where  should  we  arrive  at  that  rate?  What 
things  can  my  intelligence  compass?  Is  there  a 
thing  in  this  world  that  can  be  separated  from  the 
inconceivable?  Since  there  is  no  means  of  elimi- 
nating that  inconceivable,  it  is  reasonable  and  salu- 
tary to  make  the  best  of  it  and  therefore  to  imagine 
it  as  stupendously  vast  as  we  are  able.  The  gravest 
reproach  that  can  be  brought  against  the  positive 
religions  and  notably  against  Christianity  is  that 
they  have  too  often,  if  not  in  theory,  at  least  in 
practice,  encouraged  such  a  narrowing  of  the  mys- 
tery of  the  universe.  By  broadening  it,  we  broaden 
the  space  wherein  our  mind  will  move.  It  is  for  us 
what  we  make  it :  let  us  then  form  it  of  all  that  we 
can  reach  on  the  horizon  of  ourselves.  As  for  the 
mysteiy  itself,  we  shall,  of  course,  never  reach  it; 
but  we  have  a  much  greater  chance  of  approaching 
it  by  facing  it  and  going  whither  it  draws  us  than 
by  turning  our  backs  upon  it  and  returning  to  that 
place  where  we  well  know  that  it  no  longer  is.  Not 
by  diminishing  our  thoughts  shall  we  diminish  the 
distance  that  separates  us  from  the  ultimate  truths ; 
but  by  enlarging  them  as  much  as  possible  we  are 


TWO  ASPECTS  OF  INFINITY      95 

sure  of  deceiving  ourselves  as  little  as  possible. 
And  the  loftier  our  idea  of  the  infinite,  the  more 
buoyant  and  the  purer  becomes  the  spiritual  at- 
mosphere wherein  we  live  and  the  wider  and  deeper 
the  horizon  against  which  our  thoughts  and  feelings 
stand  out,  the  horizon  which  is  all  their  life  and 
which  they  inspire. 

"Perpetually  to  construct  ideas  requiring  the  ut- 
most stretch  of  our  faculties,"  wrote  Herbert  Spen- 
cer, "and  perpetually  to  find  that  such  ideas  must 
be  abandoned  as  futile  imaginations,  may  realise  to 
us  more  fully  than  any  other  course  the  greatness 
of  that  which  we  vainly  strive  to  grasp.  .  .  .  By 
continually  seeking  to  know  and  being  continually 
thrown  back  with  a  deepened  conviction  of  the  im- 
possibility of  knowing,  we  may  keep  alive  the  con- 
sciousness that  it  is  alike  our  highest  wisdom  and 
our  highest  duty  to  regard  that  through  which  all 
things  exist  as  the  Unknowable." 

8 

Whatever  the  ultimate  truth  may  be,  whether  we 
admit  the  abstract,  absolute  and  perfect  infinity — 
the  changeless,  immovable  infinity  which  has  at- 
tained perfection  and  which  knows  everything,  to 


96  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

which  our  reason  tends — or  whether  we  prefer  that 
offered  to  us  by  the  evidence,  undeniable  here  be- 
low, of  our  senses — the  infinity  which  seeks  itself, 
which  is  still  evolving  and  not  yet  established — it 
behoves  us  above  all  to  foresee  in  it  our  fate,  which, 
for  that  matter,  must,  in  either  case,  end  by  absorp- 
tion in  that  very  infinity. 


VI 
OUR  FATE   IN  THOSE   INFINITIES 


VI 
OUR  FATE  IN  THOSE  INFINITIES 


THE  first  infinity,  the  ideal  infinity,  corre- 
sponds most  nearly  with  the  requii'ements 
of  our  reason,  which  does  not  justify  us  in 
giving  it  the  preference.  It  is  impossible  for  us 
to  foresee  what  we  shall  become  in  it,  because  it 
seems  to  exclude  any  becoming.  It  therefore  but 
remains  for  us  to  address  ourselves  to  the  second,  to 
that  which  we  see  and  imagine  in  time  and  space. 
Furthermore,  it  is  possible  that  it  may  precede  the 
other.  However  absolute  our  conception  of  the  uni- 
verse, we  have  seen  that  we  can  always  admit  that 
what  has  not  taken  place  in  the  eternity  before  us 
will  happen  in  the  eternity  after  us  and  that  there  is 
nothing  save  an  untold  number  of  chances  to  pre- 
vent the  universe  from  acquiring  in  the  end  that 
perfect  consciousness  which  will  establish  it  at  its 
zenith. 

98 


100  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

2 

Behold  us,  then,  in  the  infinity  of  those  worlds, 
the  stellar  infinity,  the  infinity  of  the  heavens,  which 
assuredly  veils  other  things  from  our  eyes,  but  which 
cannot  be  a  total  illusion.  It  seems  to  us  to  be 
peopled  only  with  objects — planets,  suns,  stars, 
nebulae,  atoms,  imponderous  fluids — which  move, 
unite  and  separate,  repel  and  attract  one  another, 
which  shrink  and  expand,  are  for  ever  shifting  and 
never  arrive,  which  measure  space  in  that  which  has 
no  confines  and  number  the  hours  in  that  which  has 
no  term.  In  a  word,  we  are  in  an  infinity  that  seems 
to  have  almost  the  same  character  and  the  same 
habits  as  that  power  in  the  midst  of  which  we 
breathe  and  which,  upon  oui'  earth,  we  call  nature 
or  life. 

What  will  be  our  fate  in  that  infinity?  We  are 
asking  ourselves  no  idle  question,  even  if  we  should 
unite  with  it  after  losing  all  consciousness,  all  notion 
of  the  ego,  even  if  we  should  exist  there  as  no  more 
than  a  little  nameless  substance — soul  or  matter,  we 
cannot  tell — suspended  in  the  equally  nameless 
abyss  that  replaces  time  and  space.  It  is  not  an 
idle  question,  for  it  concerns  the  history  of  the 
worlds  or  of  the  universe ;  and  this  history,  far  more 


OUR  FATE  IN  INFINITIES     101 

than  that  of  our  petty  existence,  is  our  own  great 
historj^  in  which  perhaps  something  of  ourselves  or 
something  incomparably  better  and  vaster  will  end 
by  meeting  us  again  some  day. 


Shall  we  be  unhappy  there  ?  It  is  hardly  reassur- 
ing when  we  consider  the  ways  of  nature  and  re- 
member that  we  form  part  of  a  universe  that  has  not 
yet  gathered  its  wisdom.  We  have  seen,  it  is  true, 
that  good  and  bad  fortune  exist  only  in  so  far  as 
regards  our  body  and  that,  when  we  have  lost  the 
organ  of  suffering,  we  shall  not  meet  any  of  the 
earthly  sorrows  again.  But  our  anxiety  does  not  end 
here;  and  will  not  our  mind,  lingering  upon  our 
erstwhile  sorrows,  drifting  derelict  from  world  to 
world,  unknown  to  itself  in  an  unknowable  that 
seeks  itself  hopelessly,  will  not  our  mind  know  here 
the  frightful  torture  of  which  we  have  already 
spoken  and  which  is  doubtless  the  last  that  imagina- 
tion can  touch  with  its  wing?  Finally,  if  there  were 
nothing  left  of  our  body  and  our  mind,  there  would 
still  remain  the  matter  and  the  spirit  (or,  at  least, 
the  obviously  single  force  to  which  we  give  that  dou- 
ble name)   which  composed  them  and  whose  fate 


102  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

must  be  no  more  indifferent  to  us  than  our  own  fate ; 
for,  let  us  repeat,  from  our  death  onwards,  the  ad- 
venture of  the  universe  becomes  our  own  adventure. 
Let  us  not,  therefore,  say  to  ourselves: 

"What  can  it  matter?    We  shall  not  be  there." 
We  shall  be  there  always,  because  everything  will 
be  there. 

4 

And  will  this  everything  wherein  we  shall  be  in- 
cluded, in  a  world  ever  seeking  itself,  continue  a 
prey  to  new  and  perpetual  and  perhaps  painful  ex- 
periences? Since  the  part  that  we  were  was  un- 
happy, why  should  the  part  that  we  shall  be  enjoy 
a  better  fortune?  Who  can  assure  us  that  yonder 
the  unending  combinations  and  endeavours  will  not 
be  more  sorrowful,  more  stupid  and  more  baneful 
than  those  which  we  are  leaving;  and  how  shall  we 
explain  that  these  have  come  about  after  so  many 
millions  of  others  which  ought  to  have  opened  the 
eyes  of  the  genius  of  infinity?  It  is  idle  to  persuade 
ourselves,  as  Hindu  wisdom  would,  that  our  sorrows 
are  but  illusions  and  appearances :  it  is  none  the  less 
true  that  they  make  us  very  really  unhappy.  Has 
the  universe  elsewhere  a  more  complete  conscious- 


OUR  FATE  IN  INFINITIES     103 

ness,  a  more  just  and  serene  understanding  than  on 
this  earth  and  in  the  worlds  which  we  discern? 
And,  if  it  be  true  that  it  has  somewhere  attained 
that  better  understanding,  why  does  the  mind  that 
presides  over  the  destinies  of  our  earth  not  profit  by- 
it?  Is  no  communication  possible  between  worlds 
which  must  have  been  born  of  the  same  idea  and 
which  lie  in  its  depths  ?  What  would  be  the  mystery 
of  that  isolation?  Are  we  to  believe  that  the  earth 
marks  the  farthest  stage  and  the  most  successful 
experiment  ?  What,  then,  can  the  mind  of  the  uni- 
verse have  done  and  against  what  darkness  must  it 
have  struggled,  to  have  come  only  to  this?  But,  on 
the  other  hand,  that  darkness  and  those  barriers 
which  can  have  come  only  from  itself,  since  they 
could  have  arisen  no  elsewhere,  have  they  the  power 
to  stay  its  progress  ?  Who  then  could  have  set  those 
insoluble  problems  to  infinity  and  from  what  more 
remote  and  profound  region  than  itself  could  they 
have  issued?  Some  one,  after  all,  must  know  the 
answer;  and,  as  behind  infinity  there  can  oe  none" 
that  is  not  infinity  itself,  it  is  impossible  to  imagine 
a  malignant  will  in  a  will  that  leaves  no  point  around 
it  which  is  not  wholly  covered.  Or  are  the  experi- 
ments begun  in  the  stars  continued  mechanically. 


104  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

by  virtue  of  the  force  acquired,  without  regard  to 
their  uselessness  and  their  pitiful  consequences,  ac- 
cording to  the  custom  of  nature,  who  knows  noth- 
ing of  our  parsimony  and  squanders  the  suns  in 
space  as  she  does  the  seed  on  earth,  knowing  that 
nothing  can  be  lost?  Or,  again,  is  the  whole  ques- 
tion of  our  peace  and  happiness,  like  that  of  the  fate 
of  the  worlds,  reduced  to  knowing  whether  or  not 
the  infinity  of  endeavours  and  combinations  be  equal 
to  that  of  eternity?  Or,  lastly,  to  come  to  what  is 
most  likely,  is  it  we  who  deceive  ourselves,  who  know 
nothing,  who  see  nothing  and  who  consider  imper- 
fect that  which  is  perhaps  faultless,  we  who  are  but 
an  infinitesimal  fragment  of  the  intelligence  which 
we  judge  by  the  aid  of  the  little  shreds  of  under- 
standing which  it  has  vouchsafed  to  lend  us? 

5 

How  could  we  reply,  how  could  our  thoughts  and 
glances  penetrate  the  infinite  and  the  invisible,  we 
who  do  not  understand  nor  even  see  the  thing  by 
which  we  see  and  which  is  the  source  of  all  our 
thoughts?  In  fact,  as  has  been  very  justly  ob- 
served, man  does  not  see  light  itself.  He  sees  only 
matter,  or  rather  the  small  part  of  the  great  worlds 


OUR  FATE  IN  INFINITIES     105 

which  he  knows  by  the  name  of  matter,  touched  by 
Hght.  He  does  not  perceive  the  immense  rays  that 
cross  the  heavens  save  at  the  moment  when  they 
stopped  by  an  object  akin  to  those  with  which  his 
eye  is  familiar  upon  this  earth:  were  it  otherwise, 
the  whole  space  filled  with  innumerable  suns  and 
boundless  forces,  instead  of  being  an  abyss  of  abso- 
lute darkness,  absorbing  and  extinguishing  shafts 
of  light  that  shoot  across  it  from  every  side,  would 
be  but  a  monstrous  and  unbearable  ocean  of  flashes. 
And,  if  we  do  not  see  the  light,  at  least  we  think 
we  know  a  few  of  its  rays  or  its  reflexions ;  but  we 
are  absolutely  ignorant  of  that  which  is  unquestion- 
ably the  essential  law  of  the  universe,  namely,  gravi- 
tation. What  is  that  force,  the  most  powerful  of 
all  and  the  least  visible,  imperceptible  to  our  senses, 
without  form,  without  colour,  without  temperature, 
without  substance,  without  savour  and  without 
voice,  but  so  awful  that  it  suspends  and  moves  in 
space  all  the  worlds  which  we  see  and  all  those  which 
we  shall  never  know?  More  rapid,  more  subtle, 
more  incorporeal  than  thought,  it  wields  such  sway 
over  everything  that  exists,  from  the  infinitely  great 
to  the  infinitely  small,  that  there  is  not  a  grain  of 
sand  upon  our  earth  nor  a  drop  of  blood  in  our 


106  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

veins  but  are  penetrated,  wrought  upon  and  quick- 
ened by  it  until  they  act  at  every  moment  upon  the 
farthest  planet  of  the  last  solar  system  that  we 
struggle  to  imagine  beyond  the  bounds  of  our  imag- 
ination. 

Shakspeare's  famous  lines, 

"There  are  more  things  in  heaven  and  earth,  Horatio, 
Than  are  dreamt  of  in  your  philosophy," 

have  long  since  become  utterly  inadequate.  There 
are  no  longer  more  things  than  our  philosophy  can 
dream  of  or  imagine :  there  is  none  but  things  which 
it  cannot  dream  of,  there  is  nothing  but  the  un- 
imaginable; and,  if  we  do  not  even  see  the  light, 
which  is  the  one  thing  that  we  believed  we  saw,  it 
may  be  said  that  there  is  nothing  all  around  us  but 
the  invisible. 

We  move  in  the  illusion  of  seeing  and  knowing 
that  which  is  strictly  indispensable  to  our  little  lives. 
As  for  all  the  rest,  which  is  well-nigh  everything, 
our  organs  not  only  debar  us  from  reaching,  seeing 
or  feeling  it,  but  even  restrain  us  from  suspecting 
what  it  is,  just  as  they  would  prevent  us  from  un- 
derstanding it  if  an  intelligence  of  a  different  order 
were  to  bethink  itself  of  revealing  or  explaining  it 


OUR  FATE  IN  INFINITIES     107 

to  us.  The  number  and  volume  of  those  mysteries 
is  as  boundless  as  the  universe  itself.  If  mankind 
were  one  day  to  draw  near  to  those  which  to-day  it 
deems  the  greatest  and  the  most  inaccessible,  such 
as  the  origin  and  the  aim  of  life,  it  would  at  once 
behold  rising  up  behind  them,  like  eternal  moun- 
tains, others  quite  as  great  and  quite  as  unfathom- 
able; and  so  on,  without  end.  In  relation  to  that 
which  it  would  have  to  know  in  order  to  hold  the 
key  to  the  riddle  of  this  world,  it  would  always  find 
itself  at  the  same  point  of  central  ignorance.  It 
would  be  just  the  same  if  we  possessed  an  intelli- 
gence several  million  times  greater  and  more  pene- 
trating than  ours.  All  that  its  miraculously  in- 
creased power  could  discover  would  encounter  limits 
no  less  impassable  than  at  present.  All  is  bound- 
less in  that  w'hich  has  no  bounds.  We  shall  be  the 
eternal  prisoners  of  the  universe.  It  is  therefore 
impossible  for  us  to  appreciate  in  any  degree  what- 
soever, in  the  smallest  conceivable  respect,  the  pres- 
ent state  of  the  universe  and  to  say,  as  long  as  we 
are  men,  whether  it  follows  a  straight  line  or  de- 
scribes an  immense  circle,  whether  it  is  growing 
wiser  or  madder,  whether  it  is  advancing  towards 
the  eternity  which  has  no  end  or  retracing  its  steps 


108  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

towards  that  which  had  no  beginning.  Our  sole 
privilege  within  our  tiny  confines  is  tc  struggle  to- 
wards that  which  appears  to  us  the  best  and  to  re- 
main heroically  persuaded  that  no  part  of  what  we 
do  within  those  confines  can  ever  be  wholly  lost. 

6 

But  let  not  all  these  insoluble  questions  drive  us 
towards  fear.  From  the  point  of  view  of  our  future 
beyond  the  grave,  it  is  in  no  way  necessary  that  we 
should  have  an  answer  to  everything.  Whether 
the  universe  have  already  found  its  consciousness, 
whether  it  find  it  one  day  or  seek  it  everlastingly,  it 
could  not  exist  for  the  purpose  of  being  unhappj^ 
and  of  suffering,  either  in  its  entirety,  or  in  any  one 
of  its  parts;  and  it  matters  little  if  the  latter  be  in- 
visible or  incommensurable,  considering  that  the 
smallest  is  as  great  as  the  greatest  in  what  has 
neither  limit  nor  measure.  To  torture  a  point  is 
the  same  thing  as  to  torture  the  worlds;  and,  if 
it  torture  the  worlds,  it  is  its  own  substance  that  it 
tortures.  Its  very  fate,  wherein  we  have  our  part, 
protects  us;  for  we  are  simply  morsels  of  infinity. 
It  is  inseparable  from  us  as  we  are  inseparable  from 
it.    Its  breath  is  our  breath,  its  aim  is  our  aim  and 


OUR  FATE  IN  INFINITIES     109 

we  bear  within  us  all  its  mysteries.  We  participate 
in  it  everywhere.  There  is  naught  in  us  that  es- 
capes it ;  there  is  naught  in  it  but  belongs  to  us.  It 
extends  us,  fills  us,  traverses  us  on  every  side.  In 
space  and  time  and  in  that  which,  beyond  space  and 
time,  has  as  yet  no  name,  we  represent  it  and  sum- 
marise it  completely,  with  all  its  properties  and  all 
its  future;  and,  if  its  immensity  terrifies  us,  we  are 
as  terrifying  as  itself. 

If,  therefore,  we  had  to  suffer  in  it,  our  suff*erings 
could  be  but  ephemeral;  and  nothing  matters  that 
is  not  eternal.  It  is  possible,  although  somewhat 
incomprehensible,  that  parts  should  err  and  go 
astray;  but  it  is  impossible  that  sorrow  should  be 
one  of  its  lasting  and  necessary  laws;  for  it  would 
have  brought  that  law  to  bear  against  itself.  In 
like  manner,  the  universe  is  and  must  be  its  own  law 
and  its  sole  master:  if  not,  the  law  or  the  master 
whom  it  must  obey  would  be  the  universe  alone ;  and 
the  centre  of  a  word  which  we  pronounce  without 
being  able  to  grasp  its  scope  would  be  simply 
shifted.  If  it  be  unhappy,  that  means  that  it  wills 
its  own  unhappiness;  if  it  will  its  unhappiness,  it 
is  mad ;  and,  if  it  appear  to  us  mad,  that  means  that 
our  reason  works  contrary  to  everything  and  to  the 


110  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

only  laws  possible,  seeing  that  they  are  eternal,  or, 
to  speak  more  humbly,  that  it  judges  what  it  wholly 
fails  to  understand. 

7 

Everything,  therefore,  must  end,  or  perhaps  al- 
ready be,  if  not  in  a  state  of  happiness,  at  least  in  a 
state  exempt  from  all  suffering,  all  anxiety,  all  last- 
ing unhappiness ;  and  what,  after  all,  is  our  happi- 
ness upon  this  earth,  if  it  be  not  the  absence  of  sor- 
row, anxiety  and  unhappiness? 

But  it  is  childish  to  talk  of  happiness  and  un- 
happiness where  infinity  is  in  question.  The  idea 
which  we  entertain  of  happiness  and  unhappiness 
is  something  so  special,  so  human,  so  fragile  that  it 
does  not  exceed  our  stature  and  falls  to  dust  as  soon 
as  we  take  it  out  of  its  little  sphere.  It  proceeds  en- 
tirely from  a  few  contingencies  of  our  nerves,  which 
are  made  to  appreciate  very  slight  happenings,  but 
which  could  as  easily  have  felt  everything  the  oppo- 
site way  and  taken  pleasure  in  that  which  is  now 
pain. 

I  do  not  know  if  my  readers  remember  the  strik- 
ingpassage  in  which  Sir  William  Crookes  shows  how 
well-nigh  all  that  we  consider  as  essential  laws  of 
nature  would  be  falsified  in  the  eyes  of  a  microscopic 


OUR  FATE  IN  INFINITIES     111 

man,  while  forces  of  which  we  are  ahnost  wholly 
ignorant,  such  as  surface-tension,  capillarity  or  the 
Brownian  movements,  would  preponderate.  Walk- 
ing on  a  cabbage-leaf,  for  instance,  after  the  dew 
had  fallen,  and  seeing  it  studded  with  huge  crystal 
globes,  he  would  infer  that  water  was  a  solid  body 
which  assumes  spherical  form  and  rises  in  the  air. 
At  no  great  distance,  he  might  come  to  a  pond, 
when  he  would  observe  that  this  same  matter,  in- 
stead of  rising  upwards,  now  seems  to  slope  down- 
wards in  a  vast  curv^e  from  the  brink.  If  he  man- 
aged, with  the  aid  of  his  friends,  to  throw  into  the 
water  one  of  those  enormous  steel  bars  which  we  call 
needles,  he  would  see  that  it  made  a  sort  of  con- 
cave trough  on  the  surface  and  floated  tranquilly. 
From  these  experiments  and  a  thousand  others 
which  he  might  make,  he  would  naturally  deduce 
theories  diametrically  oj^posed  to  those  upon  which 
our  entire  existence  is  based.  It  would  be  the  same 
if  the  changes  were  made  in  the  direction  of  time, 
to  take  an  hypothesis  imagined  by  the  philosopher 
.William  James: 

"Suppose  we  were  able,  within  the  length  of  a 
second,  to  note  distinctly  ten  thousand  events  in- 
stead of  barely  ten,  as  now;  if  our  life  were  then 


112  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

destined  to  hold  the  same  number  of  impressions  it 
might  be  a  thousand  times  as  short.  We  should  live 
less  than  a  month,  and  personally  know  nothing  of 
the  change  of  seasons.  If  born  in  winter,  we  should 
believe  in  summer  as  we  now  believe  in  the  heats 
of  the  carboniferous  era.  The  motions  of  organic 
beings  would  be  so  slow  to  our  senses  as  to  be  in- 
ferred, not  seen.  The  sun  would  stand  still  in  the 
sky,  the  moon  be  almost  free  from  change  and  so 
on.  But  now  reverse  the  hypothesis,  and  suppose 
a  being  to  get  only  one  thousandth  part  of  the  sen- 
sations that  we  get  in  a  given  time,  and  consequently 
to  live  a  thousand  times  as  long.  Winters  and  sum- 
mers will  be  to  him  like  quarters  of  an  hour.  Mush- 
rooms and  the  swifter  growing  plants  will  shoot  into 
being  so  rapidly  as  to  appear  instantaneous  crea- 
tions ;  annual  shrubs  will  rise  and  fall  from  the  earth 
like  restlessly  boiling  water-springs ;  the  motions  of 
animals  will  be  as  invisible  as  are  to  us  the  move- 
ments of  bullets  and  cannon-balls;  the  sun  will 
scour  through  the  sky  like  a  meteor,  leaving  a  fiery 
trail  behind  him,  &c.  That  such  imaginary  cases 
(barring  the  super-human  longevity)  may  be  real- 
ised somewhere  in  the  animal  kingdom,  it  would  be 
rash  to  deny." 


OUR  FATE  IN  INFINITIES     113 

8 

We  believe  that  we  see  nothing  hanging  over  us 
but  catastrophes,  deaths,  torments  and  disasters; 
we  shiver  at  the  mere  thought  of  the  great  inter- 
planetary spaces,  with  their  intense  cold  and  their 
awful  and  gloomy  solitudes;  and  we  imagine  that 
the  worlds  that  revolve  through  space  are  as  un- 
happy as  ourselves  because  they  freeze,  or  disaggre- 
gate, or  clash  together,  or  are  consumed  in  unutter- 
able flames.  We  infer  from  this  that  the  genius  of 
the  universe  is  an  abominable  tyrant,  seized  with  a 
monstrous  madness,  delighting  only  in  the  torture 
of  itself  and  all  that  it  contains.  To  millions  of 
stars,  each  many  thousand  times  larger  than  our  sun, 
to  nebulae  whose  nature  and  dimensions  no  figure, 
no  word  in  our  language  is  able  to  express,  we  at- 
tribute our  momentary  sensibility,  the  little  ephe- 
meral play  of  our  nerves ;  and  we  are  convinced  that 
life  there  must  be  impossible  or  appalling,  because 
we  should  feel  too  hot  or  too  cold.  It  were  much 
Mqser  to  say  to  ourselves  that  it  would  need  but  a 
trifle,  a  few  papillae  more  or  less  to  our  skin,  the 
slightest  modification  of  our  eyes  and  ears,  to  turn 
the  temperature  of  space,  its  silence  and  its  dark- 


114  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

ness  into  a  delicious  springtime,  an  incomparable 
music,  a  divine  light. 

"Nothing  is  too  wonderful  to  be  true,"  said 
Faraday. 

It  were  much  more  reasonable  to  persuade  our- 
selves that  the  catastrophes  which  our  imagination 
sees  there  are  life  itself,  the  joy  and  one  or  other  of 
those  immense  festivals  of  mind  and  matter  in  which 
death,  thrusting  aside  at  last  our  two  enemies,  time 
and  space,  will  soon  permit  us  to  take  part.  Each 
world  dissolving,  extinguished,  crumbling,  burnt  or 
colliding  with  another  world  and  pulverised  means 
the  commencement  of  a  magnificent  experiment,  the 
dawn  of  a  marvellous  hope  and  perhaps  an  unex- 
pected happiness  drawn  direct  from  the  inexhausti- 
ble unknown.  What  though  they  freeze  or  flame, 
collect  or  disperse,  pursue  or  flee  one  another:  mind 
and  matter,  no  longer  united  by  the  same  pitiful 
hazard  that  joined  them  in  us,  must  rejoice  at  all 
that  happens ;  for  all  is  but  birth  and  rebirth,  a  de- 
parture into  an  unknown  filled  with  wonderful 
promises  and  maybe  an  anticipation  of  some  ineffa- 
ble event. 


VII 
CONCLUSIONS 


VII 
CONCLUSIONS 

1 

IN  order  to  retain  a  livelier  image  of  all  this  and 
a  more  exact  memory,  let  us  give  a  last  glance 
at  the  road  which  we  have  travelled.  We  have 
put  aside,  for  reasons  which  we  have  stated,  the 
religious  solutions  and  total  annihilation.  Anni- 
hilation is  physically  impossible ;  the  religious  solu- 
tions occupy  a  citadel  without  doors  or  windows  into 
which  human  reason  does  not  penetrate.  Next 
comes  the  theory  of  the  surv^ival  of  our  ego,  released 
from  its  body,  but  retaining  a  full  and  unimpaired 
consciousness  of  its  identity.  We  have  seen  that  this 
theory,  strictly  defined,  has  very  little  likelihood 
and  is  not  greatly  to  be  desired,  although,  with  the 
surrender  of  the  body,  the  source  of  all  our  ills,  it 
seems  less  to  be  feared  than  our  actual  existence. 
On  the  other  hand,  as  soon  as  we  try  to  extend  or 
to  exalt  it,  so  that  it  may  appear  less  barbarous  or 

117 


118  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

less  crude,  we  come  back  to  the  theory  of  a  cosmic 
consciousness  or  of  a  modified  consciousness,  which, 
together  with  that  of  survival  without  any  sort  of 
consciousness,  closes  the  field  to  every  supposition 
and  exhausts  every  forecast  of  the  imagination. 

Survival  without  any  sort  of  consciousness  would 
be  tantamount  for  us  to  annihilation  pure  and  sim- 
ple and  consequently  would  be  no  more  dreadful 
than  the  latter,  that  is  to  say,  than  a  sleep  with  no 
dreams  and  with  no  awakening.  The  theory  is 
unquestionably  more  acceptable  than  that  of  anni- 
hilation; but  it  prejudges  very  rashly  the  questions 
of  a  cosmic  consciousness  and  of  a  modified  con- 
sciousness. 

2 

Before  replying  to  these,  we  must  choose  our  uni- 
verse, for  we  have  the  choice.  It  is  a  matter  of 
knowing  how  we  propose  to  look  at  infinity.  Is  it 
the  moveless,  immovable  infinity,  from  all  eternity 
perfect  and  at  its  zenith,  and  the  purposeless  uni- 
verse that  our  reason  will  conceive  at  the  farthest 
point  of  our  thoughts?  Do  we  believe  that,  at  our 
death,  the  illusion  of  movement  and  progress  which 
we  see  from  the  depths  of  this  life  will  suddenly  fade 
away?    If  so,  it  is  inevitable  that,  at  our  last  breath. 


CONCLUSIONS  119 

we  shall  be  absorbed  in  what,  for  lack  of  a  better 
term,  we  call  the  cosmic  consciousness.  Are  we,  on 
the  other  hand,  persuaded  that  death  will  reveal  to 
us  that  the  illusion  lies  not  in  our  senses  but  in  our 
reason  and  that,  in  a  world  incontestably  alive,  de- 
spite the  eternity  preceding  our  birth,  all  the  experi- 
ments have  not  been  made,  that  is  to  say  that  move- 
ment and  evolution  continue  and  will  never  and  no- 
where stop?  In  that  case,  we  must  at  once  accept 
the  theory  of  a  modified  or  progressive  conscious- 
ness. The  two  aspects,  after  all,  are  equally  unin- 
telligible but  defensible ;  and,  although  really  irrec- 
oncilable, they  agree  on  one  point,  namely,  that 
unending  pain  and  unredeemed  misery  are  alike  ex- 
cluded from  them  both  for  ever. 

3 

The  theory  of  a  modified  consciousness  does  not 
necessitate  the  loss  of  the  tiny  consciousness  ac- 
:juired  in  our  body ;  but  it  makes  it  almost  negligible, 
flings,  drowns  and  dissolves  it  in  infinity.  It  is  of 
course  impossible  to  support  this  theory  with  satis- 
factory proofs;  but  it  is  not  easy  to  shatter  it  like 
the  others.  Were  it  permissible  to  speak  of  likeness 
to  truth  in  this  connection,  when  our  only  truth  is 


120  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

that  we  do  not  see  the  truth,  it  is  the  most  likely  of 
the  interim  theories  and  gives  a  magnificent  opening 
for  the  most  plausible,  varied  and  alluring  dreams. 
Will  our  ego,  our  soul,  our  spirit,  or  whatever  we 
call  that  which  will  survive  us  in  order  to  continue 
us  as  we  are,  will  it  find  again,  on  leaving  the  body, 
the  innumerable  lives  which  it  must  have  lived  since 
the  thousands  of  years  that  had  no  beginning?  .Will 
it  continue  to  increase  by  assimilating  all  that  it 
meets  in  infinity  during  the  thousands  of  years  that 
will  have  no  end  ?  Will  it  linger  for  a  time  around 
our  earth,  leading,  in  regions  invisible  to  our  eyes, 
an  ever  higher  and  happier  existence,  as  the  theoso- 
phists  and  spiritualists  contend?  Will  it  move  to- 
wards other  planetary  systems,  will  it  emigrate  to 
other  worlds,  whose  existence  is  not  even  suspected 
by  our  senses?  Everything  seems  permissible  in 
this  great  dream,  save  that  which  might  arrest  its 
flight. 

Nevertheless,  so  soon  as  it  ventures  too  far  in  the 
ultramondane  spaces,  it  crashes  into  strange  obsta- 
cles and  breaks  its  wings  against  them.  If  we  ad- 
mit that  our  ego  does  not  remain  eternally  what  it 
was  at  the  moment  of  our  death,  we  can  no  longer 
imagine  that,  at  a  given  second,  it  stops,  ceases  to 


CONCLUSIONS  121 

expand  and  rise,  attains  its  perfection  and  its  ful- 
ness, to  become  no  more  than  a  sort  of  motionless 
wreck  suspended  in  eternity  and  a  finished  thing  in 
the  midst  of  that  which  will  never  finish.  That 
A\'ould  indeed  be  the  only  real  death  and  the  more 
fearful  inasmuch  as  it  would  set  a  limit  to  an  un- 
paralleled life  and  intelligence,  beside  which  those 
which  we  possess  here  below  would  not  even  weigh 
what  a  drop  of  water  weighs  when  compared  with 
the  ocean,  or  a  grain  of  sand  when  placed  in  the 
scales  with  a  mountain-chain.  In  a  word,  either 
we  believe  that  our  evolution  will  one  day  stop,  im- 
plying thereby  an  incomprehensible  end  and  a  sort 
of  inconceivable  death;  or  we  admit  that  it  has  no 
limit,  whereupon,  being  infinite,  it  assumes  all  the 
properties  of  infinity  and  must  needs  be  lost  in  in- 
finity and  united  with  it.  This,  withal,  is  the  latter 
end  of  theosophy,  spiritualism  and  all  the  religions 
in  which  man,  in  his  ultimate  happiness,  is  absorbed 
by  God.  And  this  again  is  an  incomprehensible 
end,  but  at  least  it  is  life.  And  then,  taking  one  in- 
comprehensibility with  another,  after  doing  all  that 
is  humanly  possible  to  understand  one  or  the  other 
riddle,  let  us  by  preference  leap  into  the  greatest 
and  therefore  the  most  probable,  the  one  which  con- 


122  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

tains  all  the  others  and  after  which  nothing  more 
remains.  If  not,  the  questions  reappear  at  every 
stage  and  the  answers  are  always  conflicting.  And 
questions  and  answers  lead  us  to  the  same  inevitable 
abyss.  As  we  shall  have  to  face  it  sooner  or  later, 
why  not  make  for  it  straightway?  All  that  hap- 
pens to  us  in  the  interval  interests  us  beyond  a 
doubt,  but  does  not  detain  us,  because  it  is  not  eter- 
nal. 

4 

Behold  us  then  before  the  mystery  of  the  cosmic 
consciousness.  Although  we  are  incapable  of  un- 
derstanding the  act  of  an  infinity  that  would  have 
to  fold  itself  up  in  order  to  feel  itself  and  conse- 
quently to  define  itself  and  separate  itself  from 
other  things,  this  is  not  an  adequate  reason  for  de- 
claring it  impossible;  for,  if  we  were  to  reject  all 
the  realities  and  impossibilities  that  we  do  not  under- 
stand, there  would  be  nothing  left  for  us  to  live 
upon.  If  this  consciousness  exist  under  the  form 
which  we  have  conceived,  it  is  evident  that  we  shall 
be  there  and  take  part  in  it.  If  there  be  a  con- 
sciousness somewhere,  or  some  thing  that  takes  the 
place  of  consciousness,  we  shall  be  in  that  conscious- 
ness or  that  thing,  because  we  cannot  be  elsewhere. 


CONCLUSIONS  123 

And  as  this  consciousness  or  this  thing  cannot  be 
unhappy,  because  it  is  impossible  that  infinity  should 
exist  for  its  own  unhappiness,  neither  shall  we  be 
unhappy  wlien  we  are  in  it.  Lastly,  if  the  infinity 
into  which  we  shall  be  projected  have  no  sort  of 
consciousness  nor  anything  that  stands  for  it,  the 
reason  will  be  that  consciousness,  or  anything  that 
might  replace  it,  is  not  indispensable  to  eternal  hap- 
piness. 

5 

That,  I  think,  is  about  as  much  as  we  may  be 
permitted  to  declare,  for  the  moment,  to  the  spirit 
anxiously  facing  the  unfathomable  space  wherein 
death  will  shortly  hurl  it.  It  can  still  hope  to  find 
there  the  fulfilment  of  its  dreams;  it  will  perhaps 
find  less  to  dread  than  it  had  feared.  If  it  prefer  to 
remain  expectant  and  to  accept  none  of  the  theo- 
ries which  I  have  expounded  to  the  best  of  my  power 
and  without  prejudice,  it  nevertheless  seems  difficult 
not  to  welcome,  at  least,  this  great  assurance  which 
we  find  at  the  bottom  of  every  one  of  them,  namely, 
that  infinity  could  not  be  malevolent,  seeing  that,  if 
it  eternally  tortured  the  least  among  us,  it  would 
be  torturing  something  which  it  cannot  tear  out  of 


124  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

itself  and  that  it  would  therefore  be  torturing  its 
very  self. 

I  have  added  nothing  to  what  was  already  known. 
I  have  simply  tried  to  separate  what  may  be  true 
from  that  which  is  assuredly  not  true ;  for,  if  we  do 
not  know  where  truth  is,  we  nevertheless  learn  to 
know  where  it  is  not.  And  perhaps,  in  seeking  for 
that  undiscoverable  truth,  we  shall  have  accustomed 
our  eyes  to  pierce  the  terror  of  the  last  hour  by  look- 
ing it  full  in  the  face.  Many  things,  beyond  a 
doubt,  remain  to  be  said  which  others  will  say  with 
greater  force  and  brilliancy.  But  we  need  have  no 
hope  that  any  one  will  utter  on  this  earth  the  word 
that  shall  put  an  end  to  our  uncertainties.  It  is  very 
probable,  on  the  contrary,  that  no  one  in  this  world, 
nor  perhaps  in  the  next,  will  discover  the  great 
secret  of  the  universe.  And,  if  we  reflect  upon  this 
even  for  a  moment,  it  is  most  fortunate  that  it 
should  be  so.  We  have  not  only  to  resign  ourselves 
to  living  in  the  incomprehensible,  but  to  rejoice  that 
we  cannot  go  out  of  it.  If  there  were  no  more  in- 
soluble questions  nor  impenetrable  riddles,  infinity 
would  not  be  infinite;  and  then  we  should  have  for 
ever  to  curse  the  fate  that  placed  us  in  a  universe 
proportionate  to  our  intelligence.     All  that  exists 


CONCLUSIONS  125 

would  be  but  a  gateless  prison,  an  irreparable  evil 
and  mistake.  The  unknown  and  the  unknowable 
are  necessary  and  will  perhaps  always  be  necessary 
to  our  happiness.  In  any  case,  I  would  not  wish 
my  worst  enemy,  were  his  understanding  a  thou- 
sandfold loftier  and  a  thousandfold  mightier  than 
mine,  to  be  condemned  eternally  to  inhabit  a  world 
of  which  he  had  surprised  an  essential  secret  and  of 
which,  as  a  man,  he  had  begun  to  grasp  the  least 
tittle. 


VIII 
THE  KNOWLEDGE  OF  THE  FUTURE 


VIII 
THE   KNOWLEDGE   OF  THE  FUTURE 


WHAT  is  known  as  premonition  or  pre- 
cognition leads  us  to  mysterious  re- 
gions, where  stands,  half-emerging 
from  an  intolerable  darkness,  the  gravest  problem 
that  can  thrill  mankind,  the  knowledge  of  the  fu- 
ture. The  latest,  the  best  and  the  most  complete 
study  devoted  to  it  is,  I  believe,  that  published  by 
M.  Ernest  Bozzano  under  the  title  Des  Phenome- 
nes  premonitoires.  Availing  himself  of  excellent 
earlier  work,  notably  that  of  INIrs.  Sidgwick  and 
Myers,*  and  adding  the  result  of  his  own  researches, 
the  author  collects  some  thousand  cases  of  precog- 
nition, of  which  he  discusses  one  hundred  and  sixty, 
leaving  the  great  majority  of  the  others  on  one  side, 
not  because  they  are  negligible,  but  because  he  does 

^Proceedings,  Vols.  V.  and  XI. 

129 


130  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

not  wish  to  exceed  too  flagrantly  the  normal  limits 
of  a  monograph. 

He  begins  by  carefully  eliminating  all  the  epi- 
sodes which,  though  apparently  premonitory,  may 
be  explained  by  self-suggestion  (as  in  the  case,  for 
instance,  where  some  one  smitten  with  a  disease  still 
latent  seems  to  foresee  this  disease  and  the  death 
which  will  be  its  conclusion),  by  telepathy  (when  a 
sensitive  is  aware  before  hand  of  the  arrival  of  a 
person  or  a  letter),  or  lastly  by  clairvoyance  (when 
a  man  dreams  of  the  spot  where  he  will  find  some- 
thing which  he  has  mislaid,  or  an  uncommon  plant, 
or  an  insect  sought  for  in  vain,  or  the  unknown 
place  which  he  will  visit  at  some  later  date). 

In  all  these  cases,  we  have  not,  properly  speaking, 
to  do  with  a  pure  future,  but  rather  with  a  present 
that  is  not  yet  known.  Thus  reduced  and  stripped 
of  all  foreign  influences  and  intrusions,  the  number 
of  instances  wherein  there  is  a  really  clear  and  in- 
contestable perception  of  a  fragment  of  the  future 
remains  large  enough,  contrary  to  what  is  gener- 
ally believed,  to  make  it  impossible  for  us  to  speak 
of  extraordinary  accidents  or  wonderful  coinci- 
dences. There  must  be  a  limit  to  everything,  even 
to  distrust,  even  to  the  most  extensive  incredulity. 


KNOWLEDGE  OF  THE  FUTURE  131 

otherwise  all  historical  research  and  a  good  deal  of 
scientific  research  would  become  decidedly  imprac- 
ticable. And  this  remark  applies  as  much  to  the 
nature  of  the  incidents  related  as  to  the  actual  au- 
thenticity of  the  narratives.  We  can  contest  or 
suspect  any  story  whatever,  any  written  proof,  any 
evidence;  but  thenceforward  we  must  abandon  all 
certainty  or  knowledge  that  is  not  acquired  by 
means  of  mathematical  operations  or  laboratory  ex- 
periments, that  is  to  say,  three-fourths  of  the  human 
phenomena  that  chiefly  interest  us.  Observe  that 
the  records  collected  by  the  investigators  of  the  S. 
P.  R.,  like  those  discussed  by  M.  Bozzano,  are  all 
told  at  first  hand  and  that  those  stories  of  which  the 
narrators  were  not  the  protagonists  or  the  direct 
witnesses  have  been  ruthlessly  rejected.  Further- 
more, some  of  these  narratives  are  necessarily  of 
the  nature  of  medical  observations ;  as  for  the  others, 
if  we  attentively  examine  the  character  of  those  who 
have  related  them  and  the  circumstances  which  cor- 
roborate them,  we  shall  agree  that  it  is  more  just 
and  more  reasonable  to  believe  in  them  than  to  look 
upon  every  man  who  has  an  extraordinary  experi- 
ence as  being  a  priori  a  liar,  the  victim  of  an  hallu- 
cination, or  a  wag. 


132  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

2 

There  could  be  no  question  of  giving  here  even  a 
brief  analysis  of  the  most  striking  cases.  It  would 
require  a  hundred  pages  and  would  alter  the  whole 
nature  of  this  essay,  which,  to  keep  within  its  proper 
dimensions,  must  take  it  for  granted  that  most  of 
the  materials  which  it  examines  are  familiar.  I 
therefore  refer  the  reader  who  may  wish  to  form  an 
opinion  for  himself  to  the  easily-accessible  sources 
which  I  have  mentioned  above.  It  will  suffice  to 
give  an  accurate  idea  of  the  gravity  of  the  problem 
to  any  one  who  has  not  time  or  opportunity  to  con- 
sult the  original  documents  if  I  sum  up  in  a  few 
words  some  of  these  pioneer  adventures,  selected 
among  those  which  seem  least  open  to  dispute;  for 
it  goes  without  saying  that  all  have  not  the  same 
value,  otherwise  the  question  would  be  settled. 
There  are  some  which,  while  exceedingly  striking  at 
first  sight  and  offering  every  guarantee  that  could 
be  desired  as  to  authenticity,  nevertheless  do  not 
imply  a  real  knowledge  of  the  future  and  can  be 
interpreted  in  another  manner.  I  give  one,  to  serve 
as  an  instance ;  it  is  reported  by  Dr.  Alphonse  Teste 
in  his  Manuel  pratique  du  magnetisme  animal. 


KNOWLEDGE  OF  THE  FUTURE   133 

On  the  8th  of  May,  Dr.  Teste  magnetises  JNIme. 

Hortense in  the  presence  of  her  husband.    She 

is  no  sooner  asleep  than  she  announces  that  she  has 
been  pregnant  for  a  fortnight,  that  she  will  not  go 
her  full  time,  that  "she  will  take  fright  at  some- 
thing," that  she  w^ill  have  a  fall  and  that  the  result 
will  be  a  miscarriage.  She  adds  that,  on  the  12th 
of  May,  after  having  had  a  fright,  she  will  have  a 
fainting-fit  w^hich  will  last  for  eight  minutes;  and 
she  then  describes,  hour  by  hour,  the  course  of  her 
malady,  which  will  end  in  three  days'  loss  of  rea- 
son, from  w^hich  she  will  recover. 

On  awaking,  she  retains  no  recollection  of  any- 
thing that  has  passed ;  it  is  kept  from  her ;  and  Dr. 
Teste  communicates  his  notes  to  Dr.  Amedee 
Latour.     On  the  12th  of  May,  he  calls  on  JNI.  and 

Mme. ,  finds  them  at  table  and  puts  ]Mme. 

to  sleep  again,  whereupon  she  repeats  word  for 
word  what  she  told  him  four  days  before.  They 
wake  her  up.  The  dangerous  hour  is  drawing  near. 
They  take  every  imaginable  precaution  and  even 

close  the  shutters.     JNIme.  ,  made  uneasy  by 

these  extraordinary  measures  which  she  is  quite  un- 
able to  understand,  asks  what  they  are  going  to  do 
to  her.    Half -past  three  o'clock  strikes.    Mme. 


134  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

rises  from  the  sofa  on  which  they  have  made  her 
sit  and  wants  to  leave  the  room.  The  doctor  and 
her  husband  try  to  prevent  her. 

"But  what  is  the  matter  with  you?"  she  asks.  "I 
simply  must  go  out." 

"No,  madame,  you  shall  not:  I  speak  in  the  in- 
terest of  your  health." 

"Well,  then,  doctor,"  she  replies,  with  a  smile, 
"if  it  is  in  the  interest  of  my  health,  that  is  all  the 
more  reason  why  you  should  let  me  go  out." 

The  excuse  is  a  plausible  one  and  even  irresistible; 
but  the  husband,  wishing  to  carry  the  struggle 
against  destiny  to  the  last,  declares  that  he  will 
accompany  his  wife.  The  doctor  remains  alone, 
feeling  somewhat  anxious,  in  spite  of  the  rather 
farcical  turn  which  the  incident  has  taken.  Sud- 
denly, a  piercing  shriek  is  heard  and  the  noise  of  a 

body  falling.     He  runs  out  and  finds  Mme.  

wild  with  fright  and  apparently  dying  in  her  hus- 
band's arms.  At  the  moment  when,  leaving  him 
for  an  instant,  she  opened  the  door  of  the  place 
where  she  was  going,  a  rat,  the  first  seen  there  for 
twenty  years,  rushed  at  her  and  gave  her  so  great  a 
start  that  she  fell  flat  on  her  back.  And  all  the  rest 


KNOWLEDGE  OF  THE  FUTURE   135 

of  the  prediction  was  fulfilled  to  the  letter,  hour 
by  hour  and  detail  by  detail. 


To  make  it  quite  clear  in  what  spirit  I  am  under- 
taking this  study  and  to  remove  at  the  beginning 
any  suspicion  of  blind  or  systematic  credulity,  I  am 
anxious,  before  going  any  further,  to  say  that  I 
fully  realise  that  cases  of  this  kind  by  no  means 
carry  conviction.  It  is  quite  possible  that  every- 
thing happened  in  the  subconscious  imagination  of 
the  subject  and  that  she  herself  created,  by  self- 
suggestion  her  illness,  her  fright,  her  fall  and  her 
miscarriage  and  adapted  herself  to  most  of  the  cir- 
cumstances which  she  had  foretold  in  her  secondary 
state.  The  appearance  of  the  rat  at  the  fatal  mo- 
ment is  the  only  thing  that  would  suggest  a  pre- 
cise and  disquieting  vision  of  an  inevitable  future 
event.  Unfortunately,  we  are  not  told  that  the  rat 
was  perceived  by  other  witnesses  than  the  patient, 
so  that  there  is  nothing  to  prove  that  it  also  was  not 
imaginary.  I  have  therefore  quoted  this  inadequate 
instance  only  because  it  represents  fairly  well  the 
general  aspect  and  the  indecisive  value  of  many 
similar  cases  and  enables  us  to  note  once  and  for  all 


136  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

the  objections  which  can  be  raised  and  the  precau- 
tions which  we  should  take  before  entering  these 
suspicious  and  obscure  regions. 

.We  now  come  to  an  infinitely  more  significant 
and  less  questionable  case  related  by  Dr  Joseph 
JMaxwell,  the  learned  and  very  scrupulous  author 
of  Les  Phenonienes  psyckiques,  a  work  which  has 
been  translated  into  English  under  the  title  of 
Metapsychical  Phenomena.  It  concerns  a  vision 
which  was  described  to  him  eight  days  before  the 
event  and  which  he  told  to  many  people  before  it 
was  accomplished.  A  sensitive  perceived  in  a  crys- 
tal the  following  scene:  a  large  steamer,  flying  a 
flag  of  three  horizontal  bars,  black,  white  and  red, 
and  bearing  the  name  Leutschland,  was  sailing  in 
mid-ocean;  the  boat  was  suddenly  enveloped  in 
smoke;  a  great  number  of  sailors,  passengers  and 
men  in  uniform  rushed  to  the  upper  deck;  and  the 
boat  went  down. 

Eight  days  afterwards,  the  newspapers  an- 
nounced the  accident  to  the  Deutschland,  whose 
boiler  had  burst,  obliging  the  steamboat  to  stand 
to. 

The  evidence  of  a  man  like  Dr.  Maxwell,  especi- 


KNOWLEDGE  OF  THE  FUTURE   137 

ally  when  we  have  to  do  with  a  so-to-speak  personal 
incident,  possesses  an  importance  on  which  it  is 
needless  to  insist.  We  have  here,  therefore,  several 
days  beforehand,  the  very  clear  prevision  of  an 
event  which,  moreover,  in  no  way  concerns  the  per- 
cipient: a  curious  detail,  but  one  which  is  not  un- 
common in  these  cases.  "The  mistake  in  reading 
Leutschland  for  DeutscJiland,  which  would  have 
been  quite  natural  in  real  life,  adds  a  note  of  prob- 
ability and  authenticity  to  the  phenomenon.  As 
for  the  final  act,  the  foundering  of  the  vessel  in  the 
place  of  a  simple  heaving  to,  we  must  see  in  this, 
as  Dr.  J.  W.  Pickering  and  W.  A.  Sadgrove  sug- 
gest, "the  subconscious  dramatisation  of  a  sublim- 
inal inference  of  the  percipient."  Such  dramatisa- 
tions, moreover,  are  instinctive  and  almost  general 
in  this  class  of  visions. 

If  this  were  an  isolated  case,  it  would  certainly 
not  be  right  to  attach  decisive  importance  to  it; 
"but,"  Dr.  Maxwell  observes,  "the  same  sensitive 
has  given  me  other  curious  instances;  and  these 
cases,  compared  with  others  which  I  myself  have 
observed  or  with  those  of  which  I  have  received  first- 
hand accounts,  render  the  hypothesis  of  coincidence 


138  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

very  improbable,  though  they  do  not  absolutely  ex- 
clude it."  1 

4 

Another  and  perhaps  more  convincing  case,  more 
strictly  investigated  and  established,  a  case  which 
clearly  does  not  admit  of  explanation  by  the  theory 
of  coincidence,  worthy  of  all  respect  though  this 
theory  be,  is  that  related  by  M.  Theodore  Flournoy, 
professor  of  science  at  the  university  of  Geneva,  in 
his  remarkable  work,  Esprits  et  mediums.  Profes- 
sor Flournoy  is  known  to  be  one  of  the  most  learned 
and  critical  exponents  of  the  new  science  of  meta- 
psychics.  He  even  carries  his  fondness  for  natural 
explanations  and  his  repugnance  to  admit  the  in- 
tervention of  superhuman  powers  to  a  point  whither 
it  is  often  difficult  to  follow  him.  I  will  give  the 
narrative  as  briefly  as  possible.  It  will  be  found 
in  full  on  pp.  348  to  362  of  his  masterly  book. 

In  August,  1883,  a  certain  Mme.  Buscarlet, 
whom  he  knew  personally,  returned  to  Geneva  after 
spending  three  years  with  the  Moratief  family  at 
Kazan  as  governess  to  two  girls.  She  continued  to 
correspond  with  the  family  and  also  with  a  Mme. 
Nitchinof,  who  kept  a  school  at  Kazan  to  which 

*  Maxwell,  Metapsychical  Phenomena,  p.  202. 


KNOWLEDGE  OF  THE  FUTURE  139 

Miles.  Moratief,  JNIme.  Buscarlet's  former  pupils, 
went  after  her  departure. 

On  the  night  of  the  9th  of  December  (O.  S.)  of 
the  same  year,  Mme.  Buscarlet  had  a  dream  which 
she  described  the  following  morning  in  a  letter  to 
Mme.  JNIoratief,  dated  10  December.  She  wrote, 
to  quote  her  own  words : 

"You  and  I  were  on  a  country-road  when  a  car- 
riage passed  in  front  of  us  and  a  voice  from  inside 
called  to  us.  When  we  came  up  to  the  carriage,  we 
saw  Mile.  Olga  Popoi  lying  across  it,  clothed  in 
white,  wearing  a  bonnet  trimmed  with  yellow  rib- 
bons.   She  said  to  you: 

*'  'I  called  you  to  tell  you  that  Mme.  Xitchinof 
will  leave  the  school  on  the  17th.' 

"The  carriage  then  drove  on." 

A  week  later  and  three  days  before  the  letter 
reached  Kazan,  the  event  foreseen  in  the  dream  was 
fulfilled  in  a  tragic  fashion.  Mme.  Nitchinof  died 
on  the  16th  of  an  infectious  disease;  and  on  the  17th 
her  body  was  carried  out  of  the  school  for  fear  of 
infection. 

It  is  well  to  add  that  both  Mme.  Buscharlet's  let- 
ter and  the  replies  which  came  from  Russia  were 


140  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

communicated  to  Professor  Flournoy  and  bear  the 
postmark  dates. 

Such  premonitory  dreams  are  frequent;  but  it 
does  not  often  happen  that  circumstances  and  espe- 
cially the  existence  of  a  document  dated  previous  to 
their  fulfilment  give  them  such  incontestable  authen- 
ticity. 

We  may  remark  in  passing  the  odd  character  of 
this  premonition.  The  date  is  fixed  precisely;  but 
only  a  veiled  and  mysterious  allusion  (the  woman 
lying  across  the  carriage  and  cloaked  in  white)  is 
made  to  the  essential  part  of  the  prediction,  the  ill- 
ness and  death.  Was  there  a  coincidence,  a  vision 
of  the  future  pure  and  simple,  or  a  vision  of  the  fu- 
ture suggested  by  telepathic  influence  ?  The  theory 
of  coincidence  can  be  defended,  if  need  be,  here  as 
every  elsewhere,  but  would  be  very  extraordinary 
in  this  case.  As  for  telepathic  influence,  we  should 
have  to  suppose  that,  on  the  9th  of  December,  a 
week  before  her  death,  Mme.  Nitchinof  had  in  her 
subconsciousness  a  presentiment  of  her  end  and  that 
she  transmitted  this  presentment  across  some  thou- 
sands of  miles,  from  Kazan  to  Geneva,  to  a  person 
with  whom  she  had  never  been  intimate.  It  is  very 
complex  but  possible,  for  telepathy  often  has  these 


KNOWLEDGE  OF  THE  FUTURE  141 

disconcerting  ways.  If  this  were  so,  the  case  would 
be  one  of  latent  illness  or  even  of  self-suggestion; 
and  the  pre-existence  of  the  future,  without  being 
entirely  disproved,  would  be  less  clearly  established. 


Let  us  pass  to  other  examples.  I  quote  from  an 
excellent  article  on  the  importance  of  precognitions, 
by  Messrs.  Pickering  and  Sadgrove,  which  ap- 
peared in  the  Annales  des  sciences  psycliiques  for  1 
February  1908,  the  summary  of  an  experiment  by 
Mrs.  A.  W.  Verrall  told  in  full  detail  in  Vol.  XX. 
of  the  Proceedings.  Mrs.  Verrall  is  a  celebrated 
"automatist ;"  and  her  "cross-correspondences"  oc- 
cupy a  whole  volume  of  the  Proceedings.  Her  good 
faith,  her  sincerity,  her  fairness  and  her  scientific 
precision  are  above  suspicion ;  and  she  is  one  of  the 
most  active  and  respected  members  of  the  Society 
for  Psychical  Research. 

On  the  11th  of  May  1901,  at  11.10  p.m.,  Mrs. 
Verrall  wrote  as  follows : 

"Do  not  hurry      date  this      hoc  est  quod  volui 

tandem.         StKaLoavi^T]     Kal     X^^PO-      crvfi<f)coi'el      avveTolaiv. 

A.  W.  V.      Kal   dXXw   TLvl   Lcws.        calx  pedibus  in- 
haerens  difficultatem  superavit.  magnopere  adiuvas 


142  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

persectando  semper.  Nomen  inscribere  iam  possum 
— sic,  en  tibi!"  ^ 

After  the  writing  comes  a  humorous  drawing  rep- 
resenting a  bird  walking. 

That  same  night,  as  there  were  said  to  be  "un- 
canny happenings"  in  some  rooms  near  the  London 
Law  Courts,  the  watchers  arranged  to  sit  through 
the  night  in  the  empty  chambers.  Precautions  were 
taken  to  prevent  intrusion  and  powdered  chalk  was 
spread  on  the  floor  of  the  two  smaller  rooms,  "to 
trace  anybody  or  anything  that  might  come  or  go." 
Mrs.  Verrall  knew  nothing  of  the  matter.  The 
phenomena  began  at  12.43  a.m.  and  ended  at  2.9 
A.M.  The  watchers  noticed  marks  on  the  powdered 
chalk.  On  examination  it  was  seen  that  the  marks 
were  "clearly  defined  bird's  footprints  in  the  middle 
of  the  floor,  three  in  the  left-hand  room  and  five  in 
the  right-hand  room."  The  marks  were  identical 
and  exactly  2%  inches  in  width;  they  might  be 
compared  to  the  foot-prints  of  a  bird  about  the  size 

^Xenoglossy  is  well  known  not  to  be  unusual  in  automatic  writing; 
sometimes  even  the  "automatist"  speaks  or  writes  languages  of  which 
he  is  completely  ignorant.  The  Latin  and  Greek  passages  are 
translated  as  follows: 

"This  is  what  I  have  wanted,  at  last.  Justice  and  joy  speak  a 
word  to  the  wise.  A.  W.  V.  and  perhaps  some  one  else.  Chalk 
sticking  to  the  feet  has  got  over  the  difficulty.  You  help  greatly  by 
always  persevering.     Now  I  can  write  a  name — thus,  here  it  is!" 


KNOWLEDGE  OF  THE  FUTURE  143 

of  a  turkey.  The  foot-prints  were  observed  at  2.30 
A.M.;  the  unexplained  phenomena  had  begun  at 
12.43  that  same  morning.  The  words  about  "chalk 
sticking  to  the  feet"  are  a  singularly  appropriate 
comment  on  the  events ;  but  the  remarkable  point  is 
that  JNIrs.  Verrall  wrote  what  we  have  said  one  hour 
and  thirty-three  minutes  before  the  events  took 
place. 

The  persons  who  watched  in  the  two  rooms  were 
questioned  by  Mr.  J.  G.  Piddington,  a  member  of 
the  council  of  the  S.  P.  R.,  and  declared  that  they 
had  not  any  expectation  of  what  they  discovered. 
I  need  hardly  add  that  Mrs.  Verrall  had  never 
heard  anything  about  the  happenings  in  the  haunted 
house  and  that  the  watchers  were  completely  igno- 
rant of  Mrs.  Verrall's  existence. 

Here  then  is  a  very  curious  prediction  of  an  event, 
insignificant  in  itself,  which  is  to  happen,  in  a  house 
unknown  to  the  one  who  foretells  it,  to  people  whom 
she  does  not  know  either.  The  spiritualists,  who 
score  in  this  case,  not  without  some  reason,  will 
have  it  that  a  spirit,  in  order  to  prove  its  existence 
and  its  intelligence,  organised  this  little  scene  in 
which  the  future,  the  present  and  the  past  are  all 
mixed  up  together.     Are  they  right?    Or  is  Mrs. 


144  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

Verrall's  subconsciousness  roaming  like  this,  at  ran- 
dom, in  the  future?  It  is  certain  that  the  problem 
has  seldom  appeared  under  a  more  baffling  aspect. 

6 

.We  will  now  take  another  premonitory  dream, 
strictly  controlled  by  the  committee  of  the  S.  P.  R/ 
Early  in  September  1893,  Annette,  wife  of  Walter 
Jones,  tobacconist,  of  Old  Gravel  Lane,  East  Lon- 
don, had  her  little  boy  ill.  One  night  she  dreamt 
that  she  saw  a  cart  drive  up  and  stop  near  where  she 
was.  It  contained  three  coffins,  "two  white  and  one 
blue.  One  white  coffin  was  bigger  than  the  other; 
and  the  blue  was  the  biggest  of  the  three."  The 
driver  took  out  the  bigger  white  coffin  and  left  it 
at  the  mother's  feet,  driving  off  with  the  others. 
Mrs.  Jones  told  her  dream  to  her  husband  and  to  a 
neighbour,  laying  particular  stress  on  the  curious 
circumstance  that  one  of  the  coffins  was  blue. 

On  the  10th  of  September,  a  friend  of  Mr.  and 
Mrs.  Jones  was  confined  of  a  boy,  who  died  on  the 
20th  of  the  same  month.  Their  own  little  boy  died 
on  the  following  Monday,  the  2nd  of  October,  being 
then  sixteen  months  old.     It  was  decided  to  bury 

^Proceedings,  Vol.  XI.,  p.  493. 


KNOWLEDGE  OF  THE  FUTURE  145 

the  two  children  on  the  same  day.  On  the  morning 
of  the  day  chosen,  the  parish  priest  informed  Mr. 
and  Mrs.  Jones  that  another  child  had  died  in  the 
neighbourhood  and  that  its  bodj^  would  be  brought 
into  church  along  with  the  two  others.  IMrs.  Jones 
remarked  to  her  husband: 

*Tf  the  coffin  is  blue,  then  my  dream  will  come 
true.     For  the  two  other  coffins  were  white." 

The  third  coffin  was  brought;  it  was  blue.  It 
remains  to  be  observed  that  the  dimensions  of  the 
coffins  corresponded  exactly  with  the  dream  pre- 
monitions, the  smallest  being  that  of  the  child  who 
died  first,  the  next  that  of  the  little  Jones  boj'-,  who 
was  sixteen  months  old,  and  the  largest,  the  blue 
one,  that  of  a  boy  six  years  of  age. 

Let  us  take,  more  or  less  at  random,  another  case 
from  the  inexhaustible  Proceedings}  The  report  is 
written  by  Mr.  Alfred  Cooper  and  attested  by  the 
Duchess  of  Hamilton,  the  Duke  of  Manchester  and 
another  gentleman  to  whom  the  duchess  related  the 
incident  before  the  fulfilment  of  the  prophetic 
vision : 

"A  fortnight  before  the  death  of  the  late  Earl  of 
L ,"  says  ISIr.  Cooper,  "in  1882,  I  called  upon 

^Proceedings,  Vol.  XL,  p.  505. 


146  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

the  Duke  of  Hamilton,  in  Hill  Street,  to  see  him 
professionally.  After  I  had  finished  seeing  him, 
we  went  into  the  drawing-room,  where  the  duchess 
was,  and  the  duke  said  to  me: 

"  'Oh,  Cooper,  how  is  the  earl?' 

"The  duchess  said,  'What  earl?'  and,  on  my  an- 
swering, 'Lord  L ,'  she  replied: 

"  'That  is  very  odd.  I  have  had  a  most  extra- 
ordinary vision.  I  went  to  bed,  but,  after  being  in 
bed  a  short  time,  I  was  not  exactly  asleep,  but 
thought  I  saw  a  scene  as  if  from  a  play  before  me. 

The  actors  in  it  were  Lord  L ,  in  a  chair,  as  if 

in  a  fit,  with  a  man  standing  over  him  with  a  red 
beard.  He  was  by  the  side  of  a  bath,  over  which 
bath  a  red  lamp  was  distinctly  shown.' 

"I  then  said: 

"  'I  am  attending  Lord  L at  present ;  there 

is  very  little  the  matter  with  him ;  he  is  not  going  to 
die;  he  will  be  all  right  very  soon.' 

"Well,  he  got  better  for  a  week  and  was  nearly 
well,  but,  at  the  end  of  six  or  seven  days  after  this, 
I  was  called  to  see  him  suddenly.  He  had  inflam- 
mation of  both  lungs. 

"I  called  in  Sir  William  Jenner,  but  in  six  days 
he  was  a  dead  man.    There  were  two  male  nurses  at- 


KNOWLEDGE  OF  THE  FUTURE   147 

tending  on  him ;  one  had  been  taken  ill.  But,  when 
I  saw  the  other,  the  dream  of  the  duchess  was  ex- 
actly represented.  He  was  standing  near  a  bath 
over  the  earl  and,  strange  to  say,  his  beard  was  red. 
There  was  the  bath  with  the  red  lamp  over  it;  and 
this  brought  the  story  to  my  mind. 

"The  vision  seen  by  the  duchess  was  told  two 

weeks  before  the  death  of  Lord  L .     It  is  a 

most  remarkable  thing." 

7 
But  it  is  impossible  to  find  space  for  the  many 
instances  related.  As  I  have  said,  there  are  hun- 
dreds of  them,  making  their  tracks  in  every  direc- 
tion across  the  plains  of  the  future.  Those  which  I 
have  quoted  give  a  sufficient  idea  of  the  predomina- 
ting tone  and  the  general  aspect  of  this  sort  of  story. 
It  is  nevertheless  right  to  add  that  many  of  them 
are  not  at  all  tragic  and  that  premonition  opens  its 
mysterious  and  capricious  vistas  of  the  future  in 
connection  with  the  most  diverse  and  insignificant 
events.  It  cares  but  little  for  the  human  value  of 
the  occurrence  and  puts  the  vision  of  a  number  in  a 
lottery  on  the  same  plane  as  the  most  dramatic 
death.  The  roads  by  which  it  reaches  us  are  also 
unexpected  and  varied.    Often,  as  in  the  examples 


148  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

quoted,  it  comes  to  us  in  a  dream.  Sometimes,  it  is 
an  auditory  or  visual  hallucination  which  seizes  upon 
us  while  awake ;  sometimes,  an  indefinable  but  clear 
and  irresistible  presentiment,  a  shapeless  but  pow- 
erful obsession,  an  absurd  but  imperative  certainty 
which  rises  from  the  depths  of  our  inner  darkness, 
where  perhaps  lies  hidden  the  final  answer  to  every 
riddle. 

One  might  illustrate  each  of  these  manifestations 
with  numerous  examples.  I  will  mention  only  a 
few,  selected  not  among  the  most  striking  or  the 
most  attractive,  but  among  those  which  have  been 
most  strictly  tested  and  investigated.^  A  young 
peasant  from  the  neighbourhood  of  Ghent,  two 
months  before  the  drawing  for  the  conscription,  an- 
nounces to  all  and  sundry  that  he  will  draw  number 
90  from  the  urn.  On  entering  the  presence  of  the 
district-commissioner  in  charge,  he  asks  if  number 
90  is  still  in.    The  answer  is  yes. 

"Well,  then,  I  shall  have  it!" 

And  to  the  general  amazement,  he  does  draw 
number  90. 

Questioned  as  to  the  manner  in  which  he  acquired 
this  strange  certainty,  he  declares  that,  two  months 

^Proceedings,  Vol.  XI.,  p.  545. 


KNOWLEDGE  OF  THE  FUTURE   149 

ago,  just  after  he  had  gone  to  bed,  he  saw  a  huge, 
indescribable  form  appear  in  a  corner  of  his  room 
with  the  number  90  standing  out  plainly  in  the 
middle,  in  figures  the  size  of  a  man's  hand.  He  sat 
up  in  bed  and  shut  and  opened  his  eyes  to  persuade 
himself  that  he  was  not  dreaming.  The  apparition 
remained  in  the  same  place,  distinctly  and  unde- 
niably. 

Professor  Georges  Hulin,  of  the  university  of 
Ghent,  and  M.  Jules  van  Dooren,  the  district- 
commissioner,  who  report  the  incident,  mention 
three  other  similar  and  equally  striking  cases  wit- 
nessed by  M.  van  Dooren  during  his  term  of  office. 
I  am  the  less  inclined  to  doubt  their  declaration  in- 
asmuch as  I  am  personally  acquainted  with  them 
and  know  that  their  statements,  as  regards  the  ob- 
jective reality  of  the  facts,  are  so  to  speak  equiva- 
lent to  a  legal  deposition.  M.  Gozzano  mentions 
some  previsions  which  are  quite  as  remarkable  in 
connection  with  the  gaming-tables  at  Monte  Carlo. 

I  repeat,  I  am  aware  that,  in  the  case  of  these 
occurrences  and  those  wliich  resemble  them,  it  is 
possible  once  again  to  invoke  the  theory  of  coinci- 
dence. It  will  be  contended  that  there  are  probably 
a  thousand  predictions  of  this  kind  which  are  never 


150  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

talked  about,  because  they  were  not  fulfilled,  where- 
as, if  one  of  them  is  accomplished,  which  is  bound 
by  the  law  of  probabilities  to  happen  some  day  or 
other,  the  astonishment  is  general  and  free  rein  is 
given  to  the  imagination.  This  is  true;  neverthe- 
less, it  is  well  to  enquire  whether  these  predictions 
are  as  frequent  as  is  loosely  stated.  In  the  mat- 
ter of  those  which  concern  the  conscription-draw- 
ings, for  instance,  I  have  had  the  opportunity  of  in- 
terrogating more  than  one  constant  witness  of  these 
little  dramas  of  fate;  and  all  admitted  that,  on  the 
whole,  they  are  much  rarer  than  one  would  believe. 
Next,  we  must  not  forget  that  there  can  be  no  ques- 
tion here  of  scientific  proofs.  We  are  in  the  midst 
of  a  slippery  and  nebulous  region,  where  we  would 
not  dare  to  risk  a  step  if  we  were  not  allowing  our- 
selves to  be  guided  by  our  feelings  rather  than  by 
certainties  which  we  are  not  forbidden  to  hope  for, 
but  which  are  not  yet  in  sight. 

8 

We  will  abridge  our  subject  still  further,  refer- 
ring readers  who  wish  to  know  the  details  to  the 
originals,  lest  we  should  never  have  done ;  or  rather, 
instead  of  attempting  an  abridgment,  which  would 


KNOWLEDGE  OF  THE  FUTURE   151 

still  be  too  long,  so  plentiful  are  the  materials,  we 
will  content  ourselves  with  enumerating  a  few  in- 
stances, all  taken  from  Bozzano's  Des  Phenomenes 
premonitoires.  We  read  there  of  a  funeral  proces- 
sion seen  on  a  high-road  several  days  before  it  ac- 
tually passed  that  way;  or,  again,  of  a  young 
mechanic  who,  in  the  beginning  of  November, 
dreamt  that  he  came  home  at  half -past  five  in  the 
afternoon  and  saw  his  sister's  little  girl  run  over 
by  a  tram-car  while  crossing  the  street  in  front  of 
the  house.  He  told  his  dream,  in  great  distress; 
and,  on  the  13th  of  the  same  month,  in  spite  of  all 
the  precautions  that  had  been  taken,  the  child  was 
run  over  by  the  tram-car  and  killed  at  the  hour 
named.  We  find  the  ghost,  the  phantom  animal 
or  the  mysterious  noise  which,  in  certain  families, 
is  the  traditional  herald  of  a  death  or  of  an  im- 
minent catastrophe.  We  find  the  celebrated  vision 
which  the  painter  Segantini  had  thirteen  days  be- 
fore his  decease,  every  detail  of  which  remained  in 
his  mind  and  was  represented  in  his  last  picture, 
Death.  We  find  the  ]Messina  disaster  clearly  fore- 
seen, twice  over,  by  a  little  girl  who  j^erished  under 
the  ruins  of  the  ill-fated  city;  and  we  read  of  a 


152  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

dream  which,  three  months  before  the  French  in- 
vasion of  Russia,  foretold  to  Countess  Toutschkoff 
that  her  husband  would  fall  at  Borodino,  a  village 
so  little  known  at  the  time  that  those  interested  in 
the  dream  looked  in  vain  for  its  name  on  the  maps. 
Until  now  we  have  spoken  only  of  the  spontane- 
ous manifestations  of  the  future.  It  would  seem 
as  though  coming  events,  gathered  in  front  of  our 
lives,  bear  with  crushing  weight  upon  the  uncertain 
and  deceptive  dike  of  the  present,  which  is  no 
longer  able  to  contain  them.  They  ooze  through, 
they  seek  a  crevice  by  which  to  reach  us.  But  side 
by  side  with  these  passive,  independent  and  in- 
tractable premonitions,  which  are  but  so  many 
vagrant  and  furtive  emanations  of  the  unknown, 
are  others  which  do  yield  to  entreaty,  allow  them- 
selves to  be  directed  into  channels,  are  more  or  less 
obedient  to  our  orders  and  will  sometimes  reply  to 
the  questions  which  we  put  to  them.  They  come 
from  the  same  inaccessible  reservoir,  are  no  less 
mysterious,  but  yet  appear  a  little  more  human 
than  the  others;  and,  without  drugging  ourselves 
with  puerile  or  dangerous  illusions,  we  may  be 
permitted  to  hope  that,  if  we  follow  them  and  study 


KNOWLEDGE  OF  THE  FUTURE   153 

them  attentively,  they  will  one  day  open  to  us  the 
hidden  paths  joining  that  which  is  no  more  to  that 
which  is  not  yet. 

It  is  true  that  here,  where  we  must  needs  mix 
with  the  somewhat  lawless  world  of  professional 
mystery-mongers,  we  have  to  increase  our  caution 
and  walk  with  measured  steps  on  very  suspicious 
ground.  But  even  in  this  region  of  pitfalls  we  glean 
a  certain  number  of  facts  that  cannot  reasonably 
be  contested.  It  will  be  enough  to  recall,  for  in- 
stance, the  symbolic  premonitions  of  the  famous 
"seeress  of  Prevorst,"  Frau  Hauffe,  whose  pro- 
phetic spirit  was  awakened  by  soap-bubbles,  crystals 
and  mirrors ;  ^  the  clairvoyant  who,  eighteen  years 
before  the  event,  foretold  the  death  of  a  girl  by 
the  hand  of  her  rival  in  1907,  in  a  written  pro- 
phecy which  was  presented  to  the  court  by  the 
mother  of  the  murdered  girl ; "  the  gipsy  who,  also 
in  writing,  foretold  all  the  events  in  JNliss  Isabel 
Arundel's  life,  including  the  name  of  her  husband. 
Burton  the  famous  explorer;^  the  sealed  letter 

*  A.  J.  C.  Keener,  Die  Seherin  von  Prevorst, 

'Light,  1907,  p.  219.  The  crime  was  committed  in  Paris  and  made 
a  great  stir  at  the  time. 

"Lady  Burton,  The  Life  of  Captain  Sir  Richd.  F.  Burton, 
K.C.M.G.,  Vol.   I.,  p.   2o3. 


154  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

addressed  tolNI.Morin,  vice-president  of  the  Societe 
du  mesmerisme,  describing  the  most  unexpected 
circumstances  of  a  death  that  occurred  a  month 
later  ;^  the  famous  "Marmontel  prediction,"  ob- 
tained by  Mrs.  Verrall's  cross-correspondences, 
which  gives  a  vision,  two  months  and  a  half  before 
their  accomplishment,  of  the  most  insignificant 
actions  of  a  traveller  in  an  hotel  bedroom;"  and 
many  others. 

9 

I  will  not  review  the  various  and  very  often  gro- 
tesque methods  of  interrogating  the  future  that  are 
most  frequently  practised  to-day:  cards,  palmistry, 
crystal-gazing,  fortune-telling  by  means  of  coffee- 
grounds,  tea-leaves,  magnetic  needles  and  white  of 
egg,  graphology,  astrology  and  the  rest.  These 
methods  are  worth  exactly  what  the  medium  who 
employs  them  is  worth.  They  have  no  other  object 
than  to  arouse  the  medium's  subconsciousness  and 
to  bring  it  into  relation  with  that  of  the  person 
questioning  him.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  all  these 
purely  empirical  processes  are  but  so  many,  often 
puerile  forms  of  self-manifestation  adopted  by  the 

'  Journal  of  the  Society  for  the  Psychical  Research,  Vol.  IX.,  p.  15. 
'  Proceedings.  Vol.  XX.,  p.  331. 


KNOWLEDGE  OF  THE  FUTURE   155 

undeniable  gift  which  is  known  as  intuition,  clair- 
voyance or,  in  certain  cases,  psychometry.  I  have 
written  at  length,  in  my  volume  entitled  The  Un- 
known Guest,  of  this  last  faculty  and  need  not 
linger  over  it  now.  All  that  we  have  still  to  do  is 
to  consider  it  for  a  moment  in  its  relations  with 
the  foretelling  of  the  future. 

A  large  number  of  investigations,  notably  those 
conducted  by  M.  Duchatel  and  Dr.  Osty,  show  that, 
in  psychometry,  the  notion  of  time,  as  Dr.  Joseph 
Maxwell  observes,  is  very  loose,  that  is  to  say,  the 
past,  present  and  future  nearly  always  overlap. 
Most  of  the  clairvoyant  or  psychometric  subjects, 
when  they  are  honest,  do  not  know,  "do  not  feel," 
as  M.  Duchatel  very  ably  remarks,  "what  the  future 
is.  They  do  not  distinguish  it  from  the  other 
tenses;  and  consequently  they  succeed  in  being 
prophets,  but  unconscious  prophets."  In  a  word 
— and  this  is  a  very  important  indication  from  the 
point  of  view  of  the  probable  coexistence  of  the 
three  tenses — it  appears  that  they  see  that  which  is 
not  yet  with  the  same  clearness  and  on  the  same 
plane  as  that  which  is  no  more,  but  are  inotipable  of 
separating  the  two  visions  and  picking  out  the 
future  which  alone  interests  us.    For  a  still  stronger 


156  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

reason,  it  is  impossible  for  them  to  state  dates  with 
precision.  Nevertheless,  the  fact  remains  that, 
when  we  take  the  trouble  to  sift  their  evidence  and 
have  the  patience  to  await  the  realisation  of  certain 
events  which  are  sometimes  not  due  for  a  long  time 
to  come,  the  future  is  fairly  often  perceived  by  some 
of  these  strange  soothsayers. 

There  are  psychometers,  however,  and  notably 

Mme.  M ,  Dr.  Osty's  favourite  medium,  who 

never  confuse  the  future  and  the  past.  Mme.  M 

places  her  visions  in  time  according  to  the  position 
which  they  occupy  in  space.  Thus  she  sees  the 
future  in  front  of  her,  the  past  behind  her  and  the 
present  beside  her.  But,  notwithstanding,  these 
distinctly-graded  visions,  she  also  is  incapable  of 
naming  her  dates  exactly;  in  fact,  her  mistakes 
in  this  respect  are  so  general  that  Dr.  Osty  looks 
upon  it  as  a  pure  chronological  coincidence  when 
a  prediction  is  realised  at  the  moment  foretold. 

We  should  also  observe  that,  in  psychometry, 
only  those  events  can  be  perceived  which  relate 
directly  to  the  individual  communicating  with  the 
percipient,  for  it  is  not  so  much  the  percipient  that 
seesintous  as  we  that  read  in  our  own  subconscious- 
ness, which  is  momentarily  lighted  by  his  presence. 


KNOWLEDGE  OF  THE  FUTURE   157 

We  must  not  therefore  ask  him  for  predictions  of  a 
general  character,  whether,  for  instance,  there  will 
be  a  war  in  the  spring,  an  epidemic  in  the  summer 
or  an  earthquake  in  the  autumn.  The  moment 
the  question  concerns  events,  however  important, 
with  which  we  are  not  intimately  connected,  he  is 
bound  to  answer,  as  do  all  the  genuine  mediums, 
that  he  sees  nothing. 

The  area  of  his  vision  being  thus  limited,  does 
he  really  discover  the  future  in  it?  After  three 
years  of  numerous,  cautious  and  systematic  experi- 
ments with  some  twenty  mediums.  Dr.  Osty  cate- 
gorically declares  that  he  does: 

"All  the  incidents,"  he  says,  "which  filled  these 
three  years  of  my  life,  whether  wished  for  by  me 
or  not,  or  even,  absolutely  contrary  to  the  ordinary 
routine  of  my  life,  had  always  been  foretold  to  me, 
not  all  by  each  of  the  clairvoyant  subjects,  but  all 
by  one  or  other  of  them.  As  I  have  been  practising 
these  tests  continually,  it  seems  to  me  that  the 
experience  of  three  years  wholly  devoted  to  this 
object  should  give  some  weight  to  my  opinion  on 
the  subject  of  predictions." 

This  is  incontestable;  and  the  sincerity,  scientific 
conscientiousness  and  high  intellectual  value  of  Dr. 


158  THE  LIGHT  BEYOXD 

Osty's  fine  work  inspire  cne  with  the  utmost  confi- 
dence. Unfortunately,  he  contents  himself  with 
quoting  too  summarily  a  few  facts  and  does  not,  as 
he  ouglit,  give  us  in  extenso  the  details  of  his  experi- 
ments, controls  and  tests.  I  am  well  aware  that 
tliis  would  be  a  thankless  and  wearisome  task,  neces- 
sitating a  large  volume  which  a  mass  of  puerile  in- 
cidents and  inevitable  repetitions  would  make 
almost  unreadable.  JMoreover,  it  could  scarcely 
help  taking  the  form  of  an  intimate  and  indiscreet 
autobiography;  and  it  is  not  easy  to  bring  one's  self 
to  make  this  sort  of  public  confession.  But  it  has 
to  be  done.  In  a  science  which  is  only  in  its  early 
stages,  it  is  not  enough  to  show  the  object  attained 
and  to  state  one's  conviction;  it  is  necessary  above 
all  to  describe  every  path  that  has  been  taken  and, 
by  an  incessant  and  infinite  accumulation  of  investi- 
gated and  attested  facts,  to  enable  every  one  to 
draw  his  own  conclusions.  This  has  been  the  cum- 
brous and  laborious  method  of  the  Proceedings  for 
over  thirt}^  years ;  and  it  is  the  only  right  one.  Dis- 
cussion is  possible  and  fruitful  only  at  that  price. 
In  all  these  extra-conscious  matters,  we  have  not 
yet  reached  the  stage  of  definite  deductions,  we  are 


KNOWLEDGE  OF  THE  FUTURE    159 

still  bringing  up  materials  to  the  scene  of  opera- 
tions. 

Once  more,  I  know  that,  in  these  cases,  as  I  have 
seen  for  myself,  the  really  convincing  facts  are 
necessarily  very  rare;  indeed,  no  elsewhere  do  we 
meet  with  the  same  difficulty.     If  the  medium  tells 

you,  for  instance,  as  Mme.  M seems  easily  to 

do,  how  you  will  employ  your  day  from  the  morning 
onwards,  if  she  sees  you  in  a  certain  house  in  a  cer- 
tain street  meeting  this  or  that  person,  it  is  impossi- 
ble to  say  that,  on  the  one  hand,  she  is  not  already 
reading  your  as  yet  unconscious  plans  or  intentions, 
or  that,  on  the  other  hand,  by  doing  what  she  has 
foreseen,  you  are  not  obeying  a  suggestion  against 
which  you  could  not  fight  except  by  violently  doing 
the  opposite  to  what  it  demands  of  you,  which  again 
would  be  a  case  of  inverted  suggestion.  None 
therefore  would  have  any  value  save  predictions 
of  unlikely  happenings,  clearly  defined  and  out- 
side the  sphere  of  the  person  interested.  As  Dr. 
Osty  says: 

"The  ideal  prognostication  would  obviously  be 
that  of  an  event  so  rare,  so  sudden  and  unexpected, 
implying  such  a  change  in  one's  mode  of  life  that 
the  theory  of  coincidence  could  not  decently  be 


IGO  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

put  forward.  But,  as  everybody  is  not,  in  the 
peaceful  course  of  his  existence,  threatened  by  such 
an  absohitely  convincing  event,  the  clairvoyant  can- 
not always  reveal  to  the  person  experimenting — 
and  reveal  for  a  more  or  less  approximate  date — 
one  of  those  incidents  whose  accomplishment  would 
carry  irresistible  conviction." 

In  any  case,  the  question  of  psychometric  prog- 
nostications calls  for  further  enquiry,  though  it  is 
easy  even  at  the  present  day  to  foresee  the  results. 

10 

Let  us  now  return  to  our  spontaneous  premoni- 
tions, in  which  the  future  comes  to  seek  us  of  its 
own  accord  and,  so  to  speak,  to  challenge  us  at 
home.  I  know  from  personal  experience  that 
when  we  embark  upon  these  disconcerting  matters 
the  first  impression  is  scarcely  favourable.  We  are 
very  much  inclined  to  laugh,  to  treat  as  wearisome 
tales,  as  hysterical  hallucinations,  as  ingenious  or 
interested  fictions  most  of  the  incidents  that  give 
too  violent  a  shock  to  the  narrow  and  limited  idea 
which  we  have  of  our  human  life.  To  smile,  to 
reject  everything  beforehand  and  to  pass  by  with 
averted  head,  as  was  done,  remember,  in  the  time 


KNOWLEDGE  OF  THE  FUTURE   161 

of  Galvani  and  in  the  early  days  of  hypnotism,  is 
much  more  easy  and  seems  more  respectable  and 
prudent  than  to  stop,  admit  and  examine.  Never- 
theless we  must  not  forget  that  it  is  to  some  who 
did  not  smile  so  lightly  that  we  owe  the  best  part 
of  the  marvels  from  whose  heights  we  are  preparing 
to  smile  in  our  turn.  For  the  rest,  I  grant  that, 
thus  presented,  hastily  and  summarily,  without  the 
details  that  throw  light  upon  them  and  the  proofs 
that  support  them,  the  incidents  in  question  do  not 
show  to  advantage  and,  inasmuch  as  they  are 
isolated  and  sparingly  chosen,  lose  all  the  weight 
and  authority  derived  from  the  compact  and  impo- 
sing mass  whence  they  are  arbitrarily  detached. 
As  I  said  above,  nearly  a  thousand  cases  have  been 
collected,  representing  probably  not  the  tenth  part 
of  those  which  a  more  active  and  general  search 
might  bring  together.  The  number  is  evidently  of 
importance  and  denotes  the  enormous  pressure  of 
the  mystery;  but,  if  there  were  only  half  a  dozen 
genuine  cases — and  Dr.  Maxwell's,  Professor 
Flournoy's,  JNlrs.  Verrall's,  the  ]Marmontel,  Jones 
and  Hamilton  cases  and  some  others  are  undoubt- 
edly genuine — they  would  be  enough  to  show  that, 
under  the  erroneous  idea  which  we  form  of  the  past 


162  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

and  the  present,  a  new  verity  is  living  and  moving, 
eager  to  come  to  light. 

The  efforts  of  that  verity,  I  need  hardly  say,  dis- 
play a  very  different  sort  of  force  after  we  have 
actually  and  attentively  read  those  hundreds  of 
extraordinary  stories  which,  without  appearing  to 
do  so;  strike  to  the  very  roots  of  history.  We  soon 
lose  all  inclination  to  doubt.  We  penetrate  into 
another  world  and  come  to  a  stop  all  out  of  coun- 
tenance. We  no  longer  know  where  we  stand; 
before  and  after  overlap  and  mingle.  We  no 
longer  distinguish  the  insidious  and  factitious  but 
indispensable  line  which  separates  the  years  that 
have  gone  by  from  the  years  that  are  to  come.  We 
clutch  at  the  hours  and  days  of  the  past  and  present 
to  reassure  ourselves,  to  fasten  on  to  some  certainty, 
to  convince  ourselves  that  we  are  still  in  our  right 
place  in  this  life  where  that  which  is  not  yet  seems 
as  substantial,  as  real,  as  positive,  as  powerful  as 
that  which  is  no  more.  We  discover  with  uneasi- 
ness that  time,  on  which  we  based  our  whole  exist- 
ence, itself  no  longer  exists.  It  is  no  longer  the 
swiftest  of  our  gods,  known  to  us  only  by  its  flight 
across  all  things ;  it  alters  its  position  no  more  than 
space,  of  which  it  is  doubtless  but  the  incomprehen- 


KNOWLEDGE  OF  THE  FUTURE    163 

sible  reflex.  It  reigns  in  the  centre  of  every  event; 
and  every  event  is  fixed  in  its  centre;  and  all  that 
comes  and  all  that  goes  passes  from  end  to  end  of 
our  little  life  without  moving  by  a  hair's  breadth 
around  its  motionless  pivot.  It  is  entitled  to  but 
one  of  the  thousand  names  which  we  have  been 
wont  to  lavish  upon  its  power,  a  power  that  seemed 
to  us  manifold  and  innumerable:  "yesterday,"  "re- 
cently," "formerly,"  "erewhile,"  "after,"  "before," 
"to-morrow,"  "soon,"  "never,"  "later"  fall  like 
childish  masks,  whereas  "to-day"  and  "always"  com- 
pletely cover  with  their  united  shadows  the  idea 
which  we  form  in  the  end  of  a  duration  which  has 
no  subdivisions,  no  breaks  and  no  stages,  but  is 
pulseless,  motionless  and  boundless. 

11 

Many  are  the  theories  which  men  have  imagined 
in  their  attempts  to  explain  the  working  of  the 
strange  phenomenon;  and  many  others  might  be 
imagined. 

As  we  have  seen,  self-suggestion  and  telepathy 
explain  certain  cases  which  concern  events  already 
in  existence  but  still  latent  and  perceived  before 
the  knowledge  of  them  can  reach  us  by  the  normal 
process  of  the  senses  or  the  intelligence.     But,  even 


164  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

by  extending  these  two  theories  to  their  uttermost 
point  and  positively  abusing  their  accommodating 
elasticity,  we  do  not  succeed  in  illumining  by  their 
aid  more  than  a  rather  restricted  portion  of  the 
vast  undiscovered  land.  We  must  therefore  look 
for  something  else. 

The  first  theory  which  suggests  itself  and  which 
on  the  surface  seems  rather  attractive  is  that  of 
theory  and  other  religious  suppositions.  It  is 
scarcely  distinguishable  from  the  theosophical 
theory  and  other  religious  suppositions.  It  as- 
sumes the  survival  of  spirits,  the  existence  of  dis- 
carnate  or  other  superior  and  more  mysterious 
entities  which  surround  us,  interest  themselves  in 
our  fate,  guide  our  thoughts  and  our  actions  and, 
above  all,  know  the  future.  It  is,  as  we  recognise 
when  we  speak  of  ghosts  and  haunted  houses,  a  very 
acceptable  theory ;  and  any  one  to  whom  it  appeals 
can  adopt  it  without  doing  violence  to  his  intelli- 
gence. But  we  must  confess  that  it  seems  less 
necessary  and  perhaps  even  less  clearly  proved  in 
this  region  than  in  that.  It  starts  by  begging  the 
question:  without  the  intervention  of  discarnate 
beings,  the  spiritualists  tell  us,  it  is  impossible  to 
explain  the  majority  of  the  premonitory  pheno- 


KNOWLEDGE  OF  THE  FUTURE   165 

mena;  therefore  we  must  admit  the  existence  of 
these  discarnate  beings.  Let  us  grant  it  for  the 
moment,  for  to  beg  the  question,  which  is  merely 
an  indefensible  trick  of  the  superficial  logic  of  our 
brain,  does  not  necessarily  condemn  a  theory  and 
neither  takes  away  from  nor  adds  to  the  reality  of 
things.  Besides,  as  we  shall  insist  later,  the  inter- 
vention or  non-intervention  of  the  spirits  is  not  the 
point  at  issue;  and  the  crux  of  the  mystery  does 
not  lie  there.  What  must  interest  us  is  far  less  the 
paths  or  intermediaries  by  which  prophetic  warn- 
ings reach  us  than  the  actual  existence  of  the  future 
in  the  present.  It  is  true — to  do  complete  justice 
to  neospiritualism — that  its  position  offers  certain 
advantages  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  almost 
inconceivable  problem  of  the  pre-existence  of  the 
future.  It  can  evade  or  divert  some  of  the  conse- 
quences of  that  problem.  The  spirits,  it  declares, 
do  not  necessarily  see  the  future  as  a  whole,  as  a 
total  past  or  present,  motionless  and  immovable, 
but  they  know  infinitely  better  than  we  do  the  num- 
berless causes  that  determine  any  agent,  so,  finding 
themselves  at  the  luminous  source  of  those  causes, 
they  have  no  difficulty  in  foreseeing  their  effects. 
They  are,  with  respect  to  the  incidents  still  in  pro- 


166  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

cess  of  formation,  in  the  position  of  an  astronomer 
wlio  foretells,  witliin  a  second,  all  the  phases  of  an 
eclipse  in  which  a  savage  sees  nothing  but  an  un- 
precedented catastrophe  which  he  attributes  to  the 
anger  of  his  idols  of  straw  or  clay.  It  is  indeed 
possible  that  this  acquaintance  with  a  greater  num- 
ber of  causes  explains  certain  predictions ;  but  there 
are  plenty  of  others  which  presume  a  knowledge  of 
so  many  causes,  causes  so  remote  and  so  profound, 
that  this  knowledge  is  hardly  to  be  distinguished 
from  a  knowledge  of  the  future  pure  and  simple. 
In  any  case,  beyond  certain  limits,  the  pre-existence 
of  causes  seems  no  clearer  than  that  of  effects. 
Nevertheless  it  must  be  admitted  that  the  spiritual- 
ists gain  a  slight  advantage  here. 

They  believe  that  they  gain  another  when  they 
say  or  might  say  that  it  is  still  possible  that  the 
spirits  stimulate  us  to  realise  the  events  which  they 
foretell  without  themselves  clearly  perceiving  them 
in  the  future.  After  announcing,  for  instance, 
that  on  a  certain  day  we  shall  go  to  a  certain  place 
and  do  a  certain  thing,  they  urge  us  irresistibly  to 
proceed  to  the  spot  named  and  there  to  perform 
the  act  prophesied.  But  this  theory,  like  those  of 
self-suggestion  and  telepathy,  would  explain  only 


KNOWLEDGE  OF  THE  FUTURE   167 

a  few  phenomena  and  would  leave  in  obscurity  all 
those  cases,  infinitely  more  numerous  because  they 
make  up  almost  the  whole  of  our  future,  in  which 
either  chance  intervenes  or  some  event  in  no  way 
dependent  upon  our  will  or  the  spirit's,  unless  in- 
deed we  suppose  that  the  latter  possesses  an  omni- 
science and  an  omnipotence  which  takes  us  back  to 
the  original  mysteries  of  the  problem. 

Besides,  in  the  gloomy  regions  of  precognition,  it 
is  almost  always  a  matter  of  anticipating  a  misfor- 
tune, and  very  rarely,  if  ever,  of  meeting  with  a 
pleasure  or  a  joy.  We  should  therefore  have  to 
admit  that  the  spirits  which  drag  me  to  the  fatal 
place  and  compel  me  to  do  the  act  that  will  have 
tragic  consequences  are  deliberately  hostile  to  me 
and  find  diversion  only  in  the  spectacle  of  my  suf- 
fering. What  could  those  spirits  be,  from  what  evil 
world  would  they  arise  and  how  should  we  explain 
why  our  brothers  and  friends  of  yesterday,  after 
passing  through  the  august  and  peace-bestowing 
gates  of  death,  suddenly  become  transformed  into 
crafty  and  malevolent  demons?  Can  the  great 
spiritual  kingdom,  in  which  all  passions  born  of  the 
flesh  should  be  stilled,  be  but  a  dismal  abode  of 
hatred,  spite  and  envy?     It  will  perhaps  be  said 


108  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

that  they  lead  us  into  misfortune  in  order  to  purify 
us;  but  this  brings  us  to  religious  theories  which 
it  is  not  our  intention  to  examine. 

12 

The  only  attempt  at  an  explanation  that  can  hold 
its  own  with  spiritualism  has  recourse  once  again  to 
the  mysterious  powers  of  our  subconsciousness.  We 
must  needs  recognise  that,  if  the  future  exists  to- 
day, already  such  as  it  will  be  when  it  becomes  for 
us  the  present  and  the  past,  the  intervention  of  dis- 
carnate  minds  or  of  any  other  spiritual  entity  adrift 
from  another  sphere  is  of  little  avail.  We  can  pic- 
ture an  infinite  spirit  indifferently  contemplating 
the  past  and  future  in  their  co-existence;  we  can 
imagine  a  whole  hierarchy  of  intermediate  intelli- 
gences taking  a  more  or  less  extensive  part  in  the 
contemplation  and  transmitting  it  to  our  subcon- 
sciousness. But  all  this  is  practically  nothing  more 
than  inconsistent  speculation  and  ingenious  dream- 
ing in  the  dark;  in  any  case,  it  is  adventitious, 
secondary  and  provisional.  Let  us  keep  to  the 
facts  as  we  see  them:  an  unknown  faculty,  buried 
deep  in  our  being  and  generally  inactive,  perceives, 


KNOWLEDGE  OF  THE  FUTURE   169 

on  rare  occasions,  events  that  have  not  yet  taken 
place.  We  possess  but  one  certainty  on  this  sub- 
ject, namely,  that  the  phenomenon  actually  occurs 
within  ourselves ;  it  is  therefore  within  ourselves  that 
we  must  first  study  it,  without  burdening  ourselves 
with  suppositions  which  remove  it  from  its  centre 
and  simply  shift  the  mystery.  The  incomprehensi- 
ble mystery  is  the  pre-existence  of  the  future ;  once 
we  admit  this — and  it  seems  very  difficult  to  deny — 
there  is  no  reason  to  attribute  to  imaginary  inter- 
mediaries rather  than  to  ourselves  the  faculty  of 
descrying  certain  fragments  of  that  future.  We 
see,  in  regard  to  most  of  the  mediumistic  manifesta- 
tions, that  we  possess  within  ourselves  all  the  un- 
usual forces  with  which  the  spiritualists  endow  dis- 
carnate  spirits;  and  why  should  it  be  otherwise  as 
concerns  the  powers  of  divination?  The  explana- 
tion taken  from  the  subconsciousness  is  the  most 
direct,  the  simplest,  and  the  nearest,  whereas  the 
other  is  endlessly  circuitous,  complicated  and  dis- 
tant. Until  the  spirits  testify  to  their  existence  in 
an  unanswerable  fashion,  there  is  no  advantage  in 
seeking  in  the  grave  for  the  solution  of  a  riddle  that 
appears  indeed  to  lie  at  the  roots  of  our  own  life. 


170  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

13 

It  is  true  that  this  explanation  does  not  explain 
much;  hut  tlie  others  are  just  as  ineffectual  and  are 
open  to  the  same  ohjections.  These  objections  are 
many  and  various;  and  it  is  easier  to  raise  them 
than  to  reply  to  them.  For  instance,  we  can  ask 
ourselves  why  the  subconsciousness  or  the  spirits, 
seeing  that  they  read  the  future  and  are  able  to  an- 
nounce an  impending  calamity,  hardly  ever  give  us 
the  one  useful  and  definite  indication  that  would 
allow  us  to  avoid  it.  .What  can  be  the  childish  or 
mysterious  reason  of  this  strange  reticence?  In 
many  cases  it  is  almost  criminal;  for  instance,  in  a 
case  related  by  Professor  Hyslop  ^  we  see  the  fore- 
boding of  the  greatest  misfortune  that  can  befall 
a  mother  germinating,  growing,  sending  out  shoots, 
developing,  like  some  gluttonous  and  deadly  plant, 
to  stop  short  on  the  verge  of  the  last  warning,  the 
one  detail,  insignificant  in  itself  but  indispensable, 
which  would  have  saved  the  child.  It  is  the  case 
of  a  woman  who  begins  by  experiencing  a  vague 
but  powerful  impression  that  a  grievous  "burden" 
is  going  to  fall  upon  her  family.  Next  month,  this 
premonitory  feeling  repeats  itself  very  frequently, 

^  Proceeding t,  Vol.  XIV.,  p.  266. 


KNOWLEDGE  OF  THE  FUTURE   171 

becomes  more  intense  and  ends  by  concentrating 
itself  upon  the  poor  woman's  little  daughter.  Each 
time  that  she  is  planning  something  for  the  child's 
future,  she  hears  a  voice  saying: 

"She'U  never  need  it." 

A  week  before  the  catastrophe,  a  violent  smell  of 
fire  fills  the  house.  From  that  time  the  mother 
begins  to  be  careful  about  matches,  seeing  that  they 
are  in  safe  places  and  out  of  reach.  She  looks  all 
over  the  house  for  them  and  feels  a  strong  impulse 
to  burn  all  matches  of  the  kind  easily  lighted. 
About  an  hour  before  the  fatal  disaster,  she  reaches 
for  a  box  to  destroy  it ;  but  she  says  to  herself  that 
her  eldest  boy  is  gone  out,  thinks  that  she  may  need 
the  matches  to  light  the  gas-stove  and  decides  to 
destroy  them  as  soon  as  he  comes  back.  She  takes 
the  child  up  to  its  crib  for  its  morning  sleep  and,  as 
she  is  putting  it  into  the  cradle,  she  hears  the  usual 
mysterious  voice  whisper  in  her  ear: 

"Turn  the  mattress." 

But,  being  in  a  great  hurry,  she  simply  says  that 
she  will  turn  the  mattress  after  the  child  has  taken 
its  nap.  She  then  goes  downstairs  to  work.  After 
a  while,  she  hears  the  child  cry  and,  hurrying  up 
to  the  room,  finds  the  crib  and  its  bedding  on  fire 


172  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

and  the  child  so  badly  burnt  that  it  dies  in  three 

hours. 

14 

Before  going  further  and  theorising  about  this 
case,  let  us  once  more  state  the  matter  precisely. 
I  know  that  the  reader  may  straightway  and  quite 
legitimately  deny  the  value  of  anecdotes  of  this 
kind.  He  will  say  that  we  have  to  do  with  a  neu- 
rotic who  has  drawn  upon  her  imagination  for  all 
the  elements  that  give  a  dramatic  setting  to  the 
story  and  surround  with  a  halo  of  mystery  a  sad 
but  commonplace  domestic  accident.  This  is  quite 
possible ;  and  it  is  perfectly  allowable  to  dismiss  the 
case.  But  it  is  none  the  less  true  that,  by  thus 
deliberately  rejecting  everything  that  does  not  bear 
the  stamp  of  mathematical  or  judicial  certainty,  we 
risk  losing,  as  we  go  along,  most  of  the  opportuni- 
ties or  clues  which  the  great  riddle  of  this  world 
offers  us  in  its  moments  of  inattention  or  gracious- 
ness.  At  the  beginning  of  an  enquiry  we  must 
know  how  to  content  ourselves  with  little.  For  the 
incident  in  question  to  be  convincing,  previous  evi- 
dence in  writing,  more  or  less  official  statements, 
would  be  required,  whereas  we  have  only  the  decla- 
rations of  the  husband,  a  neighbour  and  a  sister. 


KNOWLEDGE  OF  THE  FUTURE   173 

This  is  insufficient,  I  agree ;  but  we  must  at  the  same 
time  confess  that  the  circumstances  are  hardly  fa- 
vourable to  obtaining  the  proofs  which  we  demand. 
Those  who  receive  warnings  of  this  kind  either  be- 
lieve in  them  or  do  not  believe  in  them.  If  they 
believe  in  them,  it  is  quite  natural  that  they  should 
not  think  first  of  all  of  the  scientific  interest  of  their 
trouble,  or  of  putting  down  in  writing  and  thus 
authenticating  its  premonitory  sjTnptoms  and  grad- 
ual evolution.  If  they  do  not  believe  in  them,  it 
is  no  less  natural  that  they  should  not  proceed  to 
speak  or  take  notice  of  inanities  of  which  they  do  not 
recognise  the  value  until  after  they  have  lost  the 
opportunity  of  supplying  convincing  proofs  of 
them.  Also,  do  not  forget  that  the  little  story  in 
question  is  selected  from  among  a  hundred  others, 
which  in  their  turn  are  equally  indecisive,  but  which, 
repeating  the  same  facts  and  the  same  tendencies 
with  a  strange  persistency,  end  by  weakening  the 
most  inveterate  distrust. 

15 

Having  said  this  much,  in  order  to  conciliate  or 
part  company  with  those  who  have  no  intention  of 
leaving  the  terra  fir  ma  of  science,  let  us  return  to 
the  case  before  us,  which  is  all  the  more  disquieting 


174  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

inasmuch  as  we  may  consider  it  a  sort  of  prototype 
of  the  tragic  and  almost  diabolical  reticence  which 
we  find  in  most  premonitions.  It  is  probable  that 
imder  the  mattress  there  was  a  stray  match  which 
the  child  discovered  and  struck;  this  is  the  only 
possible  explanation  of  the  catastrophe,  for  there 
was  no  fire  burning  on  that  floor  of  the  house.  If 
the  mother  had  turned  the  mattress,  she  would  have 
seen  the  match ;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  she  would 
certainly  have  turned  the  mattress  if  she  had  been 
told  that  there  was  a  match  underneath  it.  Why 
did  the  voice  that  urged  her  to  perform  the  neces- 
sary action  not  add  the  one  word  that  was  capable 
of  ensuring  that  action?  The  problem  moreover  is 
equally  perturbing  and  perhaps  equally  insoluble 
whether  it  concern  our  own  subconscious  faculties, 
or  spirits,  or  strange  intelligences.  Those  who  give 
these  warnings  must  know  that  they  will  be  useless, 
because  they  manifestly  foresee  the  event  as  a 
whole ;  but  they  must  also  know  that  one  last  word, 
which  they  do  not  pronounce,  would  be  enough  to 
prevent  the  misfortune  that  is  already  consum- 
mated in  their  prevision.  They  know  it  so  well  that 
they  bring  this  word  to  the  very  edge  of  the  abyss, 
hold  it  suspended  there,  almost  let  it  fall  and  re- 


KNOWLEDGE  OF  THE  FUTURE    175 

capture  it  suddenly  at  the  moment  when  its  weight 
would  have  caused  happiness  and  life  to  rise  once 
more  to  the  surface  of  the  mighty  gulf.  What  then 
is  this  mystery?  Is  it  incapacity  or  hostility?  If 
they  are  incapable,  what  is  the  unexpected  and  sov- 
ran force  that  interposes  between  them  and  us? 
And,  if  they  are  hostile,  on  what,  on  whom  are  they 
revenging  themselves?  What  can  be  the  secret  of 
those  inliuman  games,  of  those  uncanny  and  cruel 
diversions  on  the  most  slippery  and  dangerous 
peaks  of  fate?  Why  warn,  if  they  know  that  the 
warning  will  be  in  vain?  Of  whom  are  they  mak- 
ing sport?  Is  there  really  an  inflexible  fatality  by 
virtue  of  which  that  which  has  to  be  accomplished 
is  accomplished  from  all  eternity?  But  then  why 
not  respect  silence,  since  all  speech  is  useless?  Or 
do  they,  in  spite  of  all,  perceive  a  gleam,  a  crevice 
in  the  inexorable  wall?  What  hope  do  they  find 
in  it?  Have  they  not  seen  more  clearly  than  our- 
selves that  no  deliverance  can  come  through  that 
crevice?  One  could  understand  this  fluttering  and 
wavering,  all  these  efforts  of  theirs,  if  they  did  not 
know;  but  here  it  is  proved  that  they  know  every- 
thing, since  they  foretell  exactly  that  which  they 
might  prevent.     If  we  press  them  with  questions, 


176  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

they  answer  that  there  is  nothing  to  be  done,  that 
no  human  power  could  avert  or  thwart  the  issue. 
Are  they  mad,  bored,  irritable  or  accessory  to  a 
hideous  pleasantry?  Does  our  fate  depend  on  the 
happy  solution  of  some  petty  enigma  or  childish 
conundrum,  even  as  our  salvation,  in  most  of  the 
so-called  revealed  religions,  is  settled  by  a  blind 
and  stupid  cast  of  the  die?  Is  all  the  liberty  that 
we  are  granted  reduced  to  the  reading  of  a  more  or 
less  ingenious  riddle?  Can  the  great  soul  of  the 
universe  be  the  soul  of  a  great  baby? 

16 

But,  rather  than  pursue  this  subject,  let  us  be 
just  and  admit  that  there  is  perhaps  no  way  out  of 
the  maze  and  that  our  reproaches  are  as  incom- 
prehensible as  the  conduct  of  the  spirits.  Indeed, 
what  would  you  have  them  do  in  the  circle  in  which 
our  logic  imprisons  them?  Either  they  foretell  us 
a  calamity  which  their  predictions  cannot  avert,  in 
which  case  there  is  no  use  in  foretelling  it,  or,  if 
they  announce  it  to  us  and  at  the  same  time  give 
us  the  means  to  prevent  it,  they  do  not  really  see  the 
future  and  are  foretelling  nothing,  since  the  calam- 


KNOWLEDGE  OF  THE  FUTURE   177 

ity  is  not  to  take  place,  with  the  result  that  their 
action  seems  equally  absurd  in  both  cases. 

It  is  obvious:  to  whichever  side  we  turn,  we  find 
nothing  but  the  incomprehensible.  On  the  one 
hand,  the  pre-established,  unshakable,  unalterable 
future  which  we  have  called  destiny,  fatality  or  what 
you  will,  which  suppresses  man's  entire  independ- 
ence and  liberty  of  action  and  which  is  the  most 
inconceivable  and  the  dreariest  of  mysteries;  on 
the  other,  intelligence  apparently  superior  to  our 
own,  since  they  know  what  we  do  not,  which,  while 
aware  that  their  intervention  is  always  useless  and 
very  often  cruel,  nevertheless  come  harassing  us 
with  their  sinister  and  ridiculous  predictions.  Must 
we  resign  ourselves  once  more  to  living  with  our 
eyes  shut  and  our  reason  drowned  in  the  boundless 
ocean  of  darkness;  and  is  there  no  outlet? 

17 

For  the  moment,  we  will  not  linger  in  the  dark 
regions  of  fatality,  which  is  the  supreme  mystery, 
the  desolation  of  every  effort  and  every  thought  of 
man.  What  is  clearest  amid  this  incomprehensi- 
bility is  that  the  spiritualistic  theory,  at  first  sight 
the  most  seductive,  declares  itself,  on  examination. 


178  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

the  most  difficult  to  justify.  We  will  also  once 
more  put  aside  the  theosophical  theory,  or  any  other 
wliich  assumes  a  divine  intention  and  which  might, 
to  a  certain  extent,  explain  the  hesitations  and 
anguish  of  the  prophetic  warning,  at  the  cost,  how- 
ever, of  other  puzzles,  a  thousand  times  as  hard 
to  solve,  which  nothing  authorises  us  to  substitute 
for  the  actual  puzzle,  formless  and  infinite,  pre- 
sented to  our  uninitiated  vision. 

When  all  is  said,  it  is  perhaps  only  in  the  theory 
which  attributes  those  premonitions  to  our  subcon- 
sciousness that  we  are  able  to  find,  if  not  a  justifica- 
tion, at  least  a  sort  of  explanation  of  that  formidable 
reticence.  They  accord  fairly  well  with  the  strange, 
inconsistent,  whimsical  and  disconcerting  character 
of  the  unknown  entity  within  us  that  seems  to  live 
on  nothing  but  nondescript  fare  borrowed  from 
worlds  to  which  our  intelligence  as  yet  has  no  access. 
It  lives  under  our  reason,  in  a  sort  of  invisible  and 
perhaps  eternal  palace,  like  a  casual,  unknown 
guest,  dropped  from  another  planet,  whose  inter- 
ests, ideas,  habits,  passions  have  naught  in  coromon 
with  ours.  If  it  seems  to  liave  notions  on  the  here- 
after that  are  infinitely  wider  and  more  precise  than 
those  which  we  possess,  it  has  only  very  vague  no- 


KNOWLEDGE  OF  THE  FUTURE   179 

tions  on  the  practical  needs  of  our  existence.  It 
ignores  us  for  years,  absorbed  no  doubt  with  the 
numberless  relations  which  it  maintains  with  all  the 
mysteries  of  the  universe;  and,  when  suddenly  it 
remembers  us,  thinking  apparently  to  please  us,  it 
makes  an  enormous,  miraculous,  but  at  the  same 
time  clumsy  and  superfluous  movement,  which  up- 
sets all  that  we  believed  we  knew,  without  teaching 
us  anything.  Is  it  making  fun  of  us,  is  it  jesting, 
is  it  amusing  itself,  is  it  facetious,  teasing,  arch,  or 
simply  sleepy,  bewildered,  inconsistent,  absent- 
minded?  In  any  case,  it  is  rather  remarkable  that 
it  evidently  dislikes  to  make  itself  useful.  It  read- 
ily performs  the  most  glamorous  feats  of  sleight-of- 
hand,  provided  that  we  can  derive  no  profit  from 
them.  It  lifts  tables,  moves  the  heaviest  articles, 
produces  flowers  and  hair,  sets  strings  vibrating, 
gives  life  to  inanimate  objects  and  passes  through 
solid  matter,  conjures  up  ghosts,  subjugates  time 
and  space,  creates  light;  but  all,  it  seems,  on  one 
condition,  that  its  performances  should  be  without 
rhyme  or  reason  and  keep  to  the  province  of  super- 
naturally  vain  and  puerile  recreations.  The  case 
of  the  divining-rod  is  almost  the  only  one  in  which 
it  lends  us  any  regular  assistance,  this  being  a  sort 


180  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

of  game,  of  no  great  importance,  in  which  it  appears 
to  take  pleasure.     Sometimes,  to  say  all  that  can  be 
said,  it  consents  to  cure  certain  ailments,  cleanses 
an  ulcer,  closes  a  wound,  heals  a  lung,  strengthens 
or  unstifFens  an  arm  or  leg,  or  even  sets  bones,  but 
always   as   it   were   by   accident,   without   reason, 
method  or  object,  in  a  deceitful,  illogical  and  pre- 
posterous fashion.     One  would  set  it  down  as  a 
spoilt  child  that  has  been  allowed  to  lay  hands  on 
the  most  tremendous  secrets  of  heaven  and  earth; 
it  has  no  suspicion  of  their  power,  jumbles  them  all 
up — and  turns  them — into  paltry,  inoffensive  toys. 
It  knows  everything,  perhaps,  but  is  ignorant  of 
the  uses  of  its  knowledge.     It  has  its  arms  laden 
with  treasures  which  it  scatters  in  the  wrong  man- 
ner and  at  the  wrong  time,  giving  bread  to  the 
thirsty  and  water  to  the  hungry,  overloading  those 
who  refuse  and  stripping  the  suppliant  bare,  pur- 
suing those  who  flee  from  it  and  fleeing  from  those 
who  pursue  it.     Lastly,  even  at  its  best  moments, 
it  behaves  as  though  the  fate  of  the  being  in  whose 
depths  it  dwells  interested  it  hardly  at  all,  as  though 
it  had  but  an  insignificant  share  in  his  misfortunes, 
feeling  assured,  one  might  ahnost  think,  of  an  in- 
dependent and  endless  existence. 


KNOWLEDGE  OF  THE  FUTURE   181 

It  is  not  surprising  therefore,  when  we  know  its 
habits,  that  its  communications  on  the  subject  of  the 
future  should  be  as  fantastic  as  the  other  mani- 
festations of  its  knowledge  or  its  power.  Let  us 
add,  to  be  quite  fair,  that,  in  those  warnings  which 
we  would  wish  to  see  efficacious,  it  stumbles  against 
the  same  difficulties  as  the  spirits  or  other  alien 
intelligences  uselessly  foretelling  the  event  which 
they  cannot  prevent,  or  annihilating  the  event  by 
the  very  fact  of  foretelling  it. 

18 

And  now,  to  end  the  question,  is  this  unknown 
guest  of  ours  alone  responsible?  Does  it  explain 
itself  badly  or  do  we  not  understand  it?  When  we 
look  into  the  matter  closely,  there  is,  under  those 
anomalous  and  confused  manifestations,  in  spite  of 
efforts  which  we  feel  to  be  enormous  and  persever- 
ing, a  sort  of  incapacity  for  self-expression  and 
action  which  is  bound  to  attract  our  attention.  Is 
our  conscious  and  individual  life  separated  by  im- 
penetrable worlds  from  our  subconscious  and  prob- 
ably universal  life?  Does  our  unknown  guest 
speak  an  unknown  language  and  do  the  words  which 
it  speaks  and  which  we  think  tliat  we  understand 
disclose  its  thought?     Is  every  direct  road  2)itilessly 


182  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

barred  and  is  there  nothing  left  to  it  but  narrow, 
closed  paths,  in  which  the  best  of  what  it  had  to 
reveal  to  us  is  lost?  Is  this  the  reason  why  it  seeks 
those  odd,  childish,  roundabout  ways  of  automatic 
writing,  cross-correspondence,  symbolic  premoni- 
tion and  all  the  rest  ?  Yet,  in  the  typical  case  which 
we  have  quoted,  it  seems  to  speak  quite  easily  and 
plainly  when  it  says  to  the  mother: 

"Turn  the  mattress." 

If  it  can  utter  this  sentence,  why  should  it  find  it 
difficult  or  impossible  to  add : 

*'You  will  there  find  the  matches  that  will  set 
fire  to  the  curtains." 

What  forbids  it  to  do  so  and  closes  its  mouth  at 
the  decisive  moment?  We  relapse  into  the  everlast- 
ing question:  if  it  cannot  complete  the  second  sen- 
tence because  it  would  be  destroying  in  the  womb 
the  very  event  which  it  is  foretelling,  why  does  it 
utter  the  first  ? 

19 

But  it  is  well,  in  spite  of  everything,  to  seek  an 
explanation  of  the  inexplicable;  it  is  by  attacking 
it  on  every  side,  at  all  hazards,  that  we  cherish  the 
hope  of  overcoming  it;  and  we  may  therefore  say 
to   ourselves  that   our   subconsciousness,   when    it 


KNOWLEDGE  OF  THE  FUTURE   183 

warns  us  of  a  calamity  that  is  about  to  befall  us, 
knowing  all  the  future  as  it  does,  necessarily  knows 
that  the  calamity  is  already  accomplished.  As  our 
conscious  and  unconscious  lives  blend  in  it,  it  dis- 
tresses itself  and  flutters  around  our  overconfident 
ignorance.  It  tries  to  inforai  us,  through  nervous- 
ness, through  pity,  so  as  to  mitigate  the  lightning 
cruelty  of  the  blow.  It  speaks  all  the  words  that 
can  prepare  us  for  its  coming,  define  it  and  identify 
it;  but  it  is  unable  to  say  those  which  would  pre- 
vent it  from  coming,  seeing  that  it  has  come,  that  it 
is  already  present  and  perhaps  past,  manifest,  in- 
effaceable, on  another  plane  than  that  on  which  we 
live,  the  only  plane  which  we  are  capable  of  per- 
ceiving. It  finds  itself,  in  a  word,  in  the  position  of 
the  man  who,  in  the  midst  of  peaceful,  happy  and 
unsuspecting  folk,  alone  knows  some  bad  news.  He 
is  neither  able  nor  willing  to  announce  it  nor  yet  to 
hide  it  completely.  He  hesitates,  delays,  makes 
more  or  less  transparent  allusions,  but  refrains  from 
saying  the  last  word  that  would,  so  to  speak,  let 
loose  the  catastrophe  in  the  hearts  of  the  people 
around  him,  for  to  those  who  do  not  know  of  it  the 
catastrophe  is  still  as  though  it  were  not  there.  Our 
subconsciousness,   in  that  instance,  would  act  to- 


184  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

wards  tlie  future  as  we  act  towards  the  past,  the 
two  conditions  being  identical,  so  much  so  that  it 
often  confuses  them.  It  is  of  course  impossible  for 
us,  at  the  stage  which  we  have  reached,  to  under- 
stand this  confusion  or  this  co-existence  of  the  past, 
the  present  and  the  future ;  but  that  is  no  reason  for 
denying  it ;  on  the  contrary,  what  man  understands 
least  is  probably  that  which  most  nearly  approaches 
the  truth. 

20 

Lastly,  to  complicate  the  question,  it  may  be 
very  justly  objected  that,  though  premonitions  in 
general  are  useless  and  appear  systematically  to 
withhold  the  only  indispensable  and  decisive  words, 
there  are,  nevertheless,  some  that  often  seem  to 
save  those  who  obey  them.  These,  it  is  true,  are 
rarer  than  the  first,  but  still  they  include  a  certain 
number  that  are  well-authenticated.  It  remains 
to  be  seen  how  far  they  imply  a  knowledge  of  the 
future. 

Here,  for  instance,  is  a  traveller  who,  arriving 
at  night  in  a  small  unknown  town  and  walking 
along  the  ill-lighted  dock  in  the  direction  of  an  hotel 
of  which  he  roughly  knows  the  position,  at  a  given 
moment  feels  an  irresistible  impulse  to  turn  and  go 


KNOWLEDGE  OF  THE  FUTURE   185 

the  other  way.  He  instantly  obeys,  though  his 
reason  protests  and  "berates  him  for  a  fool"  in 
taking  a  roundabout  way  to  his  destination.  The 
next  day  he  discovers  that,  if  he  had  gone  a  few 
feet  farther,  he  would  certainly  have  slipped  into 
the  river;  and,  as  he  was  but  a  feeble  swimmer,  he 
w^ould  just  as  certainly,  being  alone  and  unaided 
in  the  extreme  darkness,  have  been  downed.^ 

But  is  this  a  prevision  of  an  event?  No,  for  no 
event  is  to  take  place.  There  is  simply  an  abnormal 
perception  of  the  proximity  of  some  unknown  water 
and  consequently  of  an  imminent  danger,  an  un- 
explained but  fairly  frequent  subliminal  sensitive- 
ness. In  a  word,  the  problem  of  the  future  is  not 
raised  in  this  case,  nor  in  any  of  the  numerous  cases 
that  resemble  it. 

Here  is  another  which  evidently  belongs  to  the 
same  class,  though  at  first  sight  it  seems  to  postu- 
late the  pre-existence  of  a  fatal  event  and  a  vision 
of  the  future  corresponding  exactly  with  a  vision  of 
the  past.  A  traveller  in  South  America  is  descend- 
ing a  river  in  a  canoe;  the  party  are  just  about  to 
run  close  to  a  promontory  when  a  sort  of  mysterious 
voice,  which  he  has  already  heard  at  different  mo- 

"^  Proceedings,  Vol.  XI.,  p.  422. 


186  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

mentous  times  of  his  life,  imperiously  orders  him 
immediately  to  cross  the  river  and  gain  the  other 
shore  as  quickly  as  possible.  This  appears  so 
absurd  that  he  is  obliged  to  threaten  the  Indians 
witli  death  to  force  them  to  take  this  course.  They 
have  scarcely  crossed  more  than  half  the  river  vi^hen 
the  promontory  falls  at  the  very  place  where  they 
meant  to  round  it.^ 

The  perception  of  imminent  danger  is  here,  I 
admit,  even  more  abnormal  than  in  the  previous 
example,  but  it  comes  under  the  same  heading.  It 
is  a  phenomenon  of  subliminal  hypersensitiveness 
observed  more  than  once,  a  sort  of  premonition  in- 
duced by  subconscious  perceptions,  which  has  been 
christened  by  the  barbarous  name  of  "crypt- 
^sthesia."  But  the  interval  between  the  moment 
when  the  peril  is  signalled  and  that  at  which  it  is 
consunmiated  is  too  short  for  those  questions  which 
relate  to  a  knowledge  or  a  pre-existence  of  the  fu- 
ture to  arise  in  this  instance. 

The  case  is  almost  the  same  with  the  adventure 
of  an  American  dentist,  very  carefully  investigated 
by  Dr.  Hodgson.  The  dentist  was  bending  over 
a  bench  on  which  was  a  little  copper  in  which  he 

*  Flournoy,  Esprits  et  mediums,  p.  316. 


KNOWLEDGE  OF  THE  FUTURE   187 

was  vulcanising  some  rubber,  when  he  heard  a  voice 
calling,  in  a  quick  and  imperative  manner,  these 
words : 

"Run  to  the  window,  quick !  Run  to  the  window, 
quick!" 

He  at  once  ran  to  the  window  and  looked  out  to 
the  street  below,  when  suddenly  he  heard  a  tremen- 
dous report  and,  looking  round,  saw  that  the  copper 
had  exploded,  destroying  a  great  part  of  the  work- 
room.^ 

Here  again,  a  subconscious  cautiousness  was 
probably  aroused  by  certain  indications  impercep- 
tible to  our  ordinary  senses.  It  is  even  possible  that 
there  exists  between  things  and  ourselves  a  sort  of 
sympathy  or  subliminal  communion  which  makes 
us  experience  the  trials  and  emotions  of  matter  that 
has  reached  the  limits  of  its  existence,  unless,  as  is 
more  likely,  there  is  merely  a  simple  coincidence 
between  the  chance  idea  of  a  possible  explosion  and 
its  realisation. 

A  last  and  rather  more  complicated  case  is  that 
of  Jean  Dupre,  the  sculptor,  who  was  driving  alone 
with  his  wife  along  a  mountain  road,  skirting  a 

^Proceedings,  Vol.  XI.,  p.  424. 


188  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

perxiendiciilar  cliff.  Suddenly  they  both  heard  a 
voice  that  seemed  to  come  from  the  mountain  cry- 
ing: 

"Stop!" 

They  turned  round,  and  saw  nobody  and  con- 
tinued their  road.  But  the  cries  were  repeated 
again  and  again,  without  anything  to  reveal  the 
presence  of  a  human  being  amid  the  solitude.  At 
last  the  sculptor  alighted  and  saw  that  the  left  wheel 
of  the  carriage,  which  was  grazing  the  edge  of  the 
precipice,  had  lose  its  linch-pin  and  was  on  the  point 
of  leaving  the  axle-tree,  which  would  almost  in- 
evitably have  hurled  the  carriage  into  the  abyss. 

Need  we,  even  here,  relinquish  the  theory  of  sub- 
conscious perceptions?  Do  we  know  and  can  the 
author  of  the  anecdote,  whose  good  faith  is  not 
in  question,  tell  us  that  certain  unperceived  circum- 
stances, such  as  the  grating  of  the  wheel  or  the 
swaying  of  the  carriage,  did  not  give  him  the  first 
alarm?  After  all,  we  know  how  easily  stories  of 
this  kind  involuntarily  take  a  dramatic  turn  even 
at  the  actual  moment  and  especially  afterwards. 

21 

These  examples — and  there  are  many  more  of  a 
similar  kind — are  enough,  I  think,  to  illustrate  this 


KNOWLEDGE  OF  THE  FUTURE   189 

class  of  premonitions.  The  problem  in  these  cases 
is  simpler  than  when  it  relates  to  fruitless  warnings ; 
at  least  it  is  simpler  so  long  as  we  do  not  bring  into 
discussion  the  question  of  spirits,  of  unknown  intel- 
ligences, or  of  an  actual  knowledge  of  the  future; 
otherwise  the  same  difficulty  reappears  and  the 
warning,  which  this  time  seems  efficacious,  is  in 
reality  just  as  vain.  In  fact,  the  mysterious  entity 
which  knows  that  the  traveller  will  go  to  the  water's 
edge,  that  the  wheel  will  be  on  the  point  of  leaving 
the  axle,  that  the  copper  will  explode,  or  that  the 
promontory  will  fall  at  a  precise  moment,  must  at 
the  same  time  know  that  the  traveller  will  not  take 
the  last  fatal  step,  that  the  carriage  will  not  be  over- 
turned, that  the  copper  will  not  hurt  anybody  and 
that  the  canoe  will  pull  away  from  the  promontory. 
It  is  inadmissible  that,  seeing  one  thing,  it  will  not 
see  the  other,  since  everything  happens  at  the  same 
point,  in  the  course  of  the  same  second.  Can  we 
say  that,  if  it  had  not  given  warning,  the  little 
saving  movement  would  not  have  been  executed? 
How  can  we  imagine  a  future  which,  at  one  and  the 
same  time,  has  parts  that  are  steadfast  and  others 
that  are  not?  If  it  is  foreseen  that  the  promon- 
tory will  fall  and  that  the  traveller  will  escape, 


190  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

thanks  to  tlie  supernatural  warning,  it  is  necessarily 
foreseen  that  the  warning  will  be  given;  and,  if  so, 
what  is  the  point  of  this  futile  comedy?  I  see  no 
reasonable  explanation  of  it  in  the  spiritist  or  spirit- 
ualistic theory,  which  postulates  a  complete  know- 
ledge of  the  future,  at  least  at  a  settled  point  and 
moment.  On  the  other  hand,  if  we  adhere  to  the 
theory  of  a  subliminal  consciousness,  we  find  there 
an  explanation  which  is  quite  worthy  of  accepta- 
tion. This  subliminal  consciousness,  though,  in  the 
majority  of  cases,  it  has  no  clear  and  comprehensive 
vision  of  the  immediate  future,  can  nevertheless 
possess  an  intuition  of  imminent  danger,  thanks  to 
indications  that  escape  our  ordinary  perception.  It 
can  also  have  a  partial,  intermittent  and  so  to  speak 
flickering  vision  of  the  future  event  and,  if  doubtful, 
can  risk  giving  an  incoherent  warning,  which,  for 
that  matter,  will  change  nothing  in  that  which  al- 
ready is. 

22 

In  conclusion,  let  us  state  once  more  that  fruitful 
premonitions  necessarily  annihilate  events  in  the 
bud  and  consequently  work  their  own  destruction, 
so  that  any  control  becomes  impossible.  They 
would  have  an  existence  only  if  they  prophesied  a 


KNOWLEDGE  OF  THE  FUTURE   191 

general  event  which  the  subject  would  not  escape 
but  for  the  warning.  If  they  had  said  to  any  one 
intending  to  go  to  Messina  two  or  three  months 
before  the  catastrophe,  "Don't  go,  for  the  town  will 
be  destroj^ed  before  the  month  is  out,"  we  should 
have  an  excellent  example.  But  it  is  a  remarkable 
thing  that  genuine  premonitions  of  this  kind  ai'e 
very  rare  and  nearly  always  rather  indefinite  in 
regard  to  events  of  a  general  order.  In  ]M.  Boz- 
zano's  excellent  collection,  which  is  a  sort  of  com- 
pendium of  premonitory  phenomena,  the  only 
pretty  clear  cases  are  nos.  civ.  and  clviii.,  both  of 
which  are  taken  from  the  Journal  of  the  S.P.R. 
In  the  first,^  a  mother  sent  a  servant  to  bring  home 
her  little  daughter,  who  had  already  left  the  house 
with  the  intention  of  going  through  the  "railway 
garden,"  a  strip  of  ground  between  the  sea-wall  and 
the  railway-embankment,  in  order  to  sit  on  the  great 
stones  by  the  seaside  and  see  the  trains  pass  by.  A 
few  minutes  after  the  little  girl's  departure,  the 
mother  had  distinctly  and  repeatedly  heard  a  voice 
within  her  say : 

"Send  for  her  back,  or  something  dreadful  will 
happen  to  her." 

^Journal,  Vol.  VIII.,  p.  45. 


192  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

Now,  soon  after,  a  train  ran  off  the  line  and  the 
engine  and  tender  fell,  breaking  through  the  pro- 
tecting wall  and  crashing  down  on  the  very  stones 
where  the  child  was  accustomed  to  sit. 

In  the  other  case,^  into  w^hich  Professor  W.  F. 
Barrettmadea  special  enquiry.  Captain  MacGowan 
was  in  Brooklyn  with  his  two  boys,  then  on  their 
holidays.  He  promised  the  boys  that  he  would  take 
them  to  the  theatre  and  booked  seats  on  the  pre- 
vious day;  but  on  the  day  of  the  proposed  visit  he 
heard  a  voice  within  him  constantly  saying : 

"Do  not  go  to  the  theatre;  take  the  boys  back 
to  school." 

He  hesitated,  gave  up  his  plan  and  resumed  it 
again.  But  the  words  kept  repeating  themselves 
and  impressing  themselves  upon  him;  and,  in  the 
end,  he  definitely  decided  not  to  go,  much  to  the 
two  boys'  disgust.  That  night,  the  theatre  was 
destroyed  by  fire,  with  a  loss  of  three  hundred  lives. 

We  may  add  to  this  the  j^revision  of  the  Battle  of 
Borodino,  to  which  I  have  already  alluded.  I  will 
give  the  story  in  fuller  detail,  as  told  in  the  journal 
of  Stephen  Grellet  the  Quaker. 

About  three  months  before  the  French  army  en- 

^  Journal,  Vol.  I.,  p.  283. 


KNOWLEDGE  OF  THE  FUTURE  193 

tered  Russia,  the  wife  of  General  Toutschkoff 
dreamt  that  she  was  at  an  inn  in  a  town  unknown 
to  her  and  that  her  father  came  into  her  room, 
holding  her  only  son  by  the  hand,  and  said  to  her, 
in  a  pitiful  tone : 

"Your  happiness  is  at  an  end.  He" — meaning 
Countess  Toutschkoff's  husband — "has  fallen.  He 
has  fallen  at  Borodino." 

The  dream  was  repeated  a  second  and  a  third 
time.  Her  anguish  of  mind  was  such  that  she  awoke 
her  husband  and  asked  him: 

"Where  is  Borodino?" 

They  looked  for  the  name  on  the  map  and  did 
not  find  it. 

Before  the  French  armies  reached  Moscow, 
Count  Toutschkoff  was  placed  at  the  head  of  the 
army  of  reserve ;  and  one  morning  her  father,  hold- 
ing her  son  by  the  hand,  entered  her  room  at  the 
inn  where  she  was  staying.  In  great  distress,  as 
she  had  beheld  him  in  her  dream,  he  cried  out: 

"He  has  fallen.     He  has  fallen  at  Borodino." 

Then  she  saw  herself  in  the  very  same  room  and 
through  the  windows  beheld  the  very  same  objects 
tliat  she  had  seen  in  her  dreams.  Her  husband 
was  one  of  the  many  who  perished  in  the  battle 


194  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

fought  near  the  River  Borodino,  from  which  an 
ohscure  village  takes  its  name/ 

23 

This  is  evidently  a  very  rare  and  perhaps  solitary 
example  of  a  long-dated  prediction  of  a  great  his- 
toric event  which  nobody  could  foresee.  It  stirs 
more  deeply  than  any  other  the  enormous  problems 
of  fatality,  free-will  and  responsibility.  But  has  it 
been  attested  with  sufficient  rigour  for  us  to  rely 
upon  it?  That  I  cannot  say.  In  any  case,  it  has 
not  been  sifted  by  the  S.P.R.  Next,  from  the 
special  point  of  view  that  interests  us  for  the  mo- 
ment, we  are  unable  to  declare  that  this  premonition 
had  any  chance  of  being  of  avail  and  preventing  the 
general  from  going  to  Borodino.  It  is  highly  pro- 
bable that  he  did  not  know  where  he  was  going  or 
where  he  was;  besides,  the  irresistible  machinery 
of  war  held  him  fast  and  it  was  not  his  part  to  dis- 
engage his  destiny.  The  premonition  therefore 
could  only  have  been  given  because  it  was  certain 
not  to  be  obeyed. 

As  for  the  two  previous  cases,  nos.  civ.  and  clviii., 

^Memoirs  of  the  Life  and  Labours  of  Stephen  Orellet,  Vol.  I., 
p.  434. 


KNOWLEDGE  OF  THE  FUTURE   195 

we  must  here  again  remark  the  usual  strange  re- 
servations and  observe  how  difficult  it  is  to  explain 
these  premonitions  save  by  attributing  them  to  our 
subconsciousness.  The  main,  unavoidable  event  is 
not  precisely  stated ;  but  a  subordinate  consequence 
seems  to  be  averted,  as  though  to  make  us  believe 
in  some  definite  power  of  free-will.  Nevertheless, 
the  mysterious  entity  that  foresaw  the  catastrophe 
must  also  have  foreseen  that  nothing  would  happen 
to  the  person  whom  it  was  warning ;  and  this  brings 
us  back  to  the  useless  farce  of  which  we  spoke  above. 
Whereas,  with  the  theory  of  a  subconscious  self, 
the  latter  may  have — as  in  the  case  of  the  traveller, 
the  promontory,  the  copper  or  the  carriage — not 
this  time  by  inferences  or  indications  that  escape 
our  perception,  but  by  other  unknown  means,  a 
vague  presentment  of  an  impending  peril,  or,  as  I 
have  already  said,  a  partial,  intermittent  and  unset- 
tled vision  of  the  future  event,  and,  in  its  doubt, 
may  utter  its  cry  of  alarm. 

Whereupon  let  us  recognise  that  it  is  almost  for- 
bidden to  human  reason  to  stray  in  these  regions; 
and  that  the  part  of  a  prophet  is,  next  to  that  of  a 
commentator  of  prophecies,  one  of  the  most  difficult 


196  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

and  thankless  that  a  man  can  attempt  to  sustain  on 

the  world's  stage. 

24 

I  am  not  sure  if  it  is  really  necessary,  before 
closing  this  chapter,  to  follow  in  the  wake  of  many 
others  and  broach  the  problem  of  the  pre-existence 
of  the  future,  which  includes  those  of  fatality,  of 
free-will,  of  time  and  of  space,  that  is  to  say,  all  the 
points  that  touch  the  essential  sources  of  the  great 
mystery  of  the  universe.  The  theologians  and  the 
metaphysicians  have  tackled  these  problems  from 
every  side  without  giving  us  the  least  hope  of  solv- 
ing them.  Among  those  which  life  sets  us,  there  is 
none  to  which  our  brain  seems  more  definitely  and 
strictly  closed ;  and  they  remain,  if  not  as  unimagi- 
nable, at  least  as  incomprehensible  as  on  the  day 
when  they  were  first  perceived.  What  corresponds, 
outside  us,  with  what  we  call  time  and  space?  We 
know  nothing  about  it;  and  Kant,  speaking  in  the 
name  of  the  "apriorists,"  who  hold  that  the  idea  of 
time  is  innate  in  us,  does  not  teach  us  much  when 
he  tells  us  that  time,  like  space,  is  an  a  priori  form 
of  our  sensibility,  that  is  to  say,  an  intuition  pre- 
ceding experience,  even  as  Guyau,  among  the  "em- 
piricists," who  consider  that  this  idea  is  acquired 


KNOWLEDGE  OF  THE  FUTURE   197 

only  by  experience,  does  not  enlighten  us  any  more 
by  declaring  that  this  same  time  is  the  abstract 
formula  of  the  changes  in  the  universe.  Whether 
space,  as  Leibnitz  maintains,  be  an  order  of  coexist- 
ence and  time  an  order  of  sequences,  whether  it  be 
by  space  that  we  succeed  in  representing  time  or 
whether  time  be  an  essential  form  of  any  represen- 
tation, whether  time  be  the  father  of  space  or  space 
the  father  of  time,  one  thing  is  certain,  which  is  that 
the  efforts  of  the  Kantian  or  neo-Kantian  apriorists 
and  of  the  pure  empiricists  and  the  idealistic  em- 
piricists all  end  in  the  same  darkness;  that  all  the 
philosophers  who  have  grappled  with  the  formidable 
dual  problem,  among  whom  one  may  mention  in- 
discriminately the  names  of  the  greatest  thinkers 
of  yesterday  and  to-day — Herbert  Spencer,  Helm- 
holtz,  Renouvier,  James  Sully,  Stumpf,  James 
Ward,  William  James,  Stuart  Mill,  Ribot,  Fouil- 
lee,  Guyau,  Bain,  Lechalas,  Balmes,  Dunan  and 
endless  others — have  been  unable  to  tame  it;  and 
that,  however  much  their  theories  may  contradict 
one  another,  they  are  all  equally  defensible  and 
alike  struggle  vainly  in  the  darkness  against  shad- 
ows that  are  not  of  our  world. 


198  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

25 

To  catch  a  glimpse  of  this  strange  problem  of  the 
pre-existence  of  the  future,  as  it  shows  itself  to  each 
of  us,  let  us  essay  more  humbly  to  translate  it  into 
tangible  images,  to  place  it  as  it  were  upon  the  stage. 
I  am  writing  these  lines  sitting  on  a  stone,  in  the 
shade  of  some  tall  beeches  that  overlook  a  little 
Norman  village.  It  is  one  of  those  lovely  summer 
days  when  the  sweetness  of  life  is  almost  visible  in 
the  azure  vase  of  earth  and  sky.  In  the  distance 
stretches  the  immense,  fertile  valley  of  the  Seine, 
with  its  green  meadows  planted  with  restful  trees, 
between  which  the  river  flows  like  a  long  path  of 
gladness  leading  to  the  misty  hills  of  the  estuary. 
I  am  looking  down  on  the  village-square,  with  its 
ring  of  young  lime-trees.  A  procession  leaves  the 
church  and,  amid  prayers  and  chanting,  they  carry 
the  statute  of  the  Virgin  around  the  sacred  pile.  I 
am  conscious  of  all  the  details  of  the  ceremony :  the 
sly  old  cure  perfunctorily  bearing  a  small  reliquary; 
four  choirmen  opening  their  mouths  to  bawl  forth 
vacantly  the  Latin  words  which  convey  nothing  to 
them;  two  mischievous  serving-boys  in  frayed 
cassocks ;  a  score  of  little  girls,  young  girls  and  old 


KNOWLEDGE  OF  THE  FUTURE   199 

maids  in  white,  all  starched  and  flounced,  followed 
by  six  or  seven  village  notables  in  baggy  frockcoats. 
The  pageant  disappears  behind  the  trees,  comes  into 
sight  again  at  the  bend  of  the  road  and  hurries  back 
into  the  church.  The  clock  in  the  steeple  strikes 
five,  as  though  to  ring  down  the  curtain  and  mark 
in  the  infinite  history  of  events  which  none  will 
recollect  the  conclusion  of  a  spectacle  which  never 
again,  until  the  end  of  the  world  and  of  the  universe 
of  worlds,  will  be  just  what  it  was  during  those 
seconds  when  it  beguiled  my  w^andering  eyes. 

For  in  vain  will  they  repeat  the  procession  next 
year  and  every  year  after :  never  again  will  it  be  the 
same.  Not  only  will  several  of  the  actors  probably 
have  disappeared,  but  all  those  who  resume  their 
old  places  in  the  ranks  will  have  undergone  the 
thousand  little  visible  and  invisible  changes  wrought 
by  the  passing  days  and  weeks.  In  a  word,  this 
insignificant  moment  is  unique,  irrecoverable,  in- 
imitable, as  are  all  the  moments  in  the  existence  of 
all  things;  and  this  little  picture,  enduring  for  a 
few  seconds  suspended  in  boundless  duration,  has 
lapsed  into  eternity,  where  henceforth  it  will  re- 
main in  its  entirety  to  the  end  of  time,  so  much  so 
that,  if  a  man  could  one  day  recapture  in  the  past, 


200  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

among  what  some  one  has  called  the  "astral  nega- 
tives," the  image  of  what  it  was,  he  would  find  it 
intact,  unchanged,  ineffaceable  and  undeniable. 

26 

It  is  not  difficult  for  us  to  conceive  that  one  can 
thus  go  back  and  see  again  the  astral  negative  of  an 
event  that  is  no  more;  and  retrospective  clairvoy- 
ance appears  to  us  a  wonderful  but  not  an  impossi- 
ble thing.  It  astonishes  but  does  not  stagger  our 
reason.  But,  when  it  becomes  a  question  of  dis- 
covering the  same  picture  in  the  future,  the  boldest 
imagination  flounders  at  the  first  step.  How  are 
we  to  admit  that  there  exists  somewhere  a  repre- 
sentation or  reproduction  of  that  which  has  not  yet 
existed?  Nevertheless,  some  of  the  incidents  which 
we  have  just  been  considering  seem  to  prove  in 
an  almost  conclusive  manner  not  only  that  such 
representations  are  possible,  but  that  we  may  arrive 
at  them  more  frequently,  not  to  say  more  conveni- 
ently, than  at  those  of  the  past.  Now,  once  this 
representation  pre-exists,  as  we  are  obliged  to  admit 
in  the  case  of  a  certain  number  of  premonitions,  the 
riddle  remains  the  same  whether  the  pre-existence  be 
one  of  a  few  hours,  a  few  years  or  several  centuries. 


KNOWLEDGE  OF  THE  FUTURE   201 

It  is  therefore  possible — for,  in  these  matters,  we 
must  go  straight  to  extremes  or  else  leave  them 
alone — it  is  therefore  possible  that  a  seer  mightier 
than  any  of  to-day,  some  god,  demigod  or  demon, 
some  unknown,  universal  or  vagrant  intelligence, 
saw  that  procession  a  million  years  ago,  at  a  time 
when  nothing  existed  of  that  w^hich  composes  and 
surrounds  it  and  when  the  very  earth  on  which  it 
moves  had  not  yet  risen  from  the  ocean  depths. 
And  other  seers,  as  mighty  as  the  first,  who  from 
age  to  age  contemplated  the  same  spot  and  the 
same  moment,  would  always  have  perceived, 
through  the  vicissitudes  and  upheavals  of  seas, 
shores  and  forests,  the  same  procession  going  round 
the  same  little  church  that  still  lay  slumbering  in 
the  oceanic  ooze  and  made  up  of  the  same  persons 
sprung  from  a  race  that  was  perhaps  not  yet  repre- 
sented on  the  earth. 

27 

It  is  obviously  difficult  for  us  to  understand  that 
the  future  can  thus  precede  chaos,  that  the  present 
is  at  the  same  time  the  future  and  the  past,  or  that 
that  which  is  not  yet  exists  already  at  the  same 
time  at  which  it  is  no  more.     But,  on  the  other  hand, 


202  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

it  is  just  as  hard  to  conceive  that  the  future  does 
not  pre-exist,  that  there  is  nothing  before  the  present 
and  that  everything  is  only  present  or  past.  It  is 
very  probable  that,  to  a  more  universal  intelligence 
than  ours,  everything  is  but  an  eternal  present,  an 
immense  punctum  stans,  as  the  metaphysicians  say, 
in  which  all  the  events  are  on  one  plane;  but  it  is 
no  less  probable  that  we  ourselves,  so  long  as  we 
are  men,  in  order  to  understand  anything  of  this 
eternal  present,  will  always  be  obliged  to  divide 
it  into  three  parts.  Thus  caught  between  two 
mysteries  equally  baffling  to  our  intelligence, 
whether  we  deny  or  admit  the  pre-existence  of  the 
future,  we  are  really  only  wrangling  over  words :  in 
the  one  case,  we  give  the  name  of  "present,"  from 
the  point  of  view  of  a  perfect  intelligence,  to  that 
which  to  us  is  the  future ;  in  the  other,  we  give  the 
name  of  "future"  to  that  which,  from  the  point  of 
view  of  a  perfect  intelligence,  is  the  present.  But, 
after  all,  it  is  incontestable  in  both  cases  that,  at 
least  from  our  point  of  view,  the  future  pre-exists, 
sincepre-existenceis  the  only  name  by  which  we  can 
describe  and  the  only  form  under  which  we  can  con- 
ceive that  which  we  do  not  yet  see  in  the  present. 


KNOWLEDGE  OF  THE  FUTURE  203 

28 

Attempts  have  been  made  to  shed  light  on  the 
riddle  by  transferring  it  to  space.  It  is  true  that  it 
there  loses  the  greater  part  of  its  obscurity;  but 
this  apparently  is  because,  in  changing  its  environ- 
ment, it  has  completely  changed  its  nature  and  no 
longer  bears  any  relation  to  what  it  was  when  it 
was  placed  in  time.  We  are  told,  for  instance, 
that  innumerable  cities  distributed  over  the  surface 
of  the  earth  are  to  us  as  if  they  were  not,  so  long  as 
we  have  not  seen  them,  and  only  begin  to  exist  on 
the  day  when  we  visit  them.  That  is  true;  but 
space,  outside  all  metaphysical  speculations,  has 
realities  for  us  which  time  does  not  possess.  Space, 
although  very  mysterious  and  incomprehensible 
once  we  pass  certain  limits,  is  nevertheless  not,  like 
time,  incomprehensible  and  illusory  in  all  its  parts. 
We  are  certainly  quite  able  to  conceive  that  those 
towns  which  we  have  never  seen  and  doubtless 
never  will  see  indubitably  exist,  whereas  we  find  it 
much  more  difficult  to  imagine  that  the  catastrophe 
which,  fifty  years  hence,  will  annihilate  one  of  them 
already  exists  as  really  as  the  town  itself.  We 
are  capable  of  picturing  a  spot  whence,  with  keener 
eyes  than  those  which  we  boast  to-day,  we  should 


204  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

see  in  one  glance  all  the  cities  of  the  earth  and  even 
those  of  other  worlds,  but  it  is  much  less  easy  for 
us  to  imagine  a  point  in  the  ages  whence  we  should 
simultaneously  discover  the  past,  the  present  and 
the  future,  because  the  past,  the  present  and  the 
future  are  three  orders  of  duration  which  cannot 
find  room  at  the  same  time  in  our  intelligence  and 
which  inevitably  devour  one  another.  How  can 
we  picture  to  ourselves,  for  instance,  a  point  in 
eternity  at  which  our  little  procession  already  ex- 
ists, while  it  is  not  yet  and  although  it  is  no  more? 
Add  to  this  the  thought  that  it  is  necessary  and 
inevitable,  from  the  millenaries  which  had  no  be- 
ginning, that,  at  a  given  moment,  at  a  given  place, 
the  little  procession  should  leave  the  little  church 
in  a  given  manner  and  that  no  known  or  imaginable 
will  can  change  anything  in  it,  in  the  future  any 
more  than  in  the  past;  and  we  begin  to  under- 
stand that  there  is  no  hope  of  understanding. 

29 

We  find  among  the  cases  collected  by  M.  Bozzano 
a  singular  premonition  wherein  the  unknown  fac- 
tors of  space  and  time  are  continued  in  a  very  curi- 
ous fashion.     In  August,  1910,  Cavaliere  Giovanni 


KNOWLEDGE  OF  THE  FUTURE   205 

de  Figueroa,  one  of  the  most  famous  fencing 
masters  at  Palermo,  dreamt  that  he  was  in  the 
country,  going  along  a  road  white  with  dust,  which 
brought  him  to  a  broad  ploughed  field.  In  the  mid- 
dle of  the  field  stood  a  rustic  building,  with  a 
ground-floor  used  for  store-rooms  and  cow-sheds 
and  on  the  right  a  rough  hut  made  of  branches  and 
a  cart  with  some  harness  lying  in  it. 

A  peasant  wearing  dark  trousers  with  a  black 
felt  hat  on  his  head,  came  forward  to  meet  him, 
asked  him  to  follow  him  and  took  him  around  be- 
hind the  house.  Through  a  low,  narrow  door  they 
entered  a  little  stable  with  a  short,  winding  stone 
staircase  leading  to  a  loft  over  the  entrance  to  the 
house.  A  mule  fastened  to  a  swinging  manger  was 
blocking  the  bottom  step;  and  the  chevalier  had 
to  push  it  aside  before  climbing  the  staircase.  On 
reaching  the  loft,  he  noticed  that  from  the  ceil- 
ing were  suspended  strings  of  melons,  tomatoes, 
onions  and  Indian  corn.  In  this  room  were  two 
women  and  a  little  girl;  and  through  a  door 
leading  to  another  room  he  caught  sight  of  an  ex- 
tremely high  bed,  unlike  any  that  he  had  ever  seen 
before. 

Here  the  dream  broke  off.    It  seemed  to  him  so 


206  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

strange  that  he  spoke  of  it  to  several  of  his  friends, 
whom  he  mentions  by  name  and  who  are  ready  to 
confirm  his  statements. 

On  the  12th  of  October  in  the  same  year,  in  order 
to  support  a  fellow-townsman  in  a  duel,  he  accom- 
panied the  seconds,  by  motor-car,  from  Naples  to 
Marano,  a  place  which  he  had  never  visited  nor 
even  heard  of.  As  soon  as  they  were  some  way  in 
the  country,  he  was  curiously  impressed  by  the 
white  and  rusty  road.  The  car  pulled  up  at  the 
side  of  a  field  which  he  at  once  recognised.  They 
alighted ;  and  he  remarked  to  one  of  the  seconds : 

"This  is  not  the  first  time  that  I  have  been  here. 
There  should  be  a  house  at  the  end  of  this  path 
and  on  the  right  a  hut  and  a  cart  with  some  harness 
m  it. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  everything  was  as  he  de- 
scribed it.  An  instant  later,  at  the  exact  moment 
foreseen  by  the  dream,  the  peasant  in  the  dark- 
trousers  and  the  black  felt  hat  came  up  and  asked 
him  to  follow  him.  But,  instead  of  walking  behind 
him,  the  chevalier  went  in  front,  for  he  already  knew 
the  way.  He  found  the  stable  and,  exactly  at  the 
place  which  it  occupied  two  months  before,  near  its 
swinging  manger,  the  mule  blocking  the  way  to  the 


KNOWLEDGE  OF  THE  FUTURE   207 

staircase.  The  fencing-master  went  up  the  steps 
and  once  more  saw  the  loft,  with  the  ceiling  hung 
with  melons,  onions  and  tomatoes,  and,  in  a  corner 
on  the  right,  the  two  silent  women  and  the  child, 
identical  with  the  figures  in  his  dream,  while  in 
the  next  room  he  recognised  the  bed  whose  uncom- 
mon height  had  so  much  impressed  him. 

It  really  looks  as  if  the  facts  themselves,  the 
extramundane  realities,  the  eternal  verities,  or 
whatever  we  may  be  pleased  to  call  them,  have 
tried  to  show  us  here  that  time  and  space  are  one 
and  the  same  illusion,  one  and  the  same  convention 
and  have  no  existence  outside  our  little  day-spanned 
understanding;  that  "everywhere"  and  "always" 
are  exactly  synonymous  terms  and  reign  alone  as 
soon  as  we  cross  the  narrow  boundaries  of  the 
obscure  consciousness  in  which  we  live.  We  are 
quite  ready  to  admit  that  Cavaliere  de  Figueroa 
may  have  had  by  clairvoyance  an  exact  and  detailed 
vision  of  places  which  he  was  not  to  visit  until  later: 
this  is  a  pretty  frequent  and  almost  classical  pheno- 
menon, which,  as  it  affects  the  realities  of  space, 
does  not  astonish  us  beyond  measure  and,  in  any 
case,  does  not  take  us  out  of  the  world  which  our 
senses  perceive.     The  field,  the  house,  the  hut,  the 


208  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

loft  do  not  move;  and  it  is  no  miracle  that  they 
should  be  found  in  the  same  place.  But,  suddenly, 
quitting  this  domain  where  all  is  stationary,  the 
phenomenon  is  transferred  to  time  and,  in  those 
unknown  places,  at  the  foretold  second,  brings 
together  all  the  moving  actors  of  that  little  drama 
in  two  acts,  of  which  the  first  was  performed  some 
two  and  a  half  months  before,  in  the  depths  of  some 
mysterious  other  life  where  it  seemed  to  be  motion- 
lessly  and  irrevocably  awaiting  its  terrestrial  real- 
isation. Any  explanation  would  but  condense  this 
vapour  of  petty  mysteries  into  a  few  drops  in  the 
ocean  of  mysteries. 

Let  us  note  again,  in  passing,  the  strange  freak- 
ishness  of  these  premonitions.  They  accumulate 
the  most  precise  and  circumstantial  details  as  long 
as  the  scene  insignificant,  but  come  to  a  sudden 
stop  before  the  one  tragic  and  interesting  scene  of 
the  drama:  the  duel  and  its  issue.  We  here  once 
more  recognise  the  inconsistent,  impotent,  ironical 
or  humorous  habits  of  our  unknown  guest. 

30 

But  we  will  not  prolong  these  somewhat  vain 
speculations  concerning  space  and  time.      We  are 


KNOWLEDGE  OF  THE  FUTURE  209 

merely  playing  with  words  that  represent  very 
badly  ideas  which  we  do  not  put  into  form  at  all. 
To  sum  up,  while  it  is  difficult  for  us  to  conceive  that 
the  future  pre-exists,  perhaps  it  is  even  more  difficult 
for  us  to  understand  that  it  does  not  exist;  more- 
over, a  certain  number  of  facts  tend  to  prove  that 
it  is  as  real  and  definite  and  has,  both  in  time  and 
in  eternity,  the  same  permanence  and  the  same 
vividness  as  the  past.  Now,  from  the  moment  that 
it  pre-exists,  it  is  not  surprising  that  we  should  be 
able  to  know  it;  it  is  even  astonishing,  granted 
that  it  overhangs  us  on  every  side,  that  we  should 
not  discover  it  oftener  and  more  easily.  It  remains 
to  be  learnt  what  would  become  of  our  life  if  every- 
thing were  foreseen  in  it,  if  we  saw  it  unfolding 
beforehand,  in  its  entirety,  with  its  events  which 
would  have  to  be  inevitable,  because,  if  it  were  pos- 
sible for  us  to  avoid  them,  they  would  not  exist 
and  we  could  not  perceive  them.  Suppose  that, 
instead  of  being  abnormal,  uncertain,  obscure, 
debatable  and  very  unusual,  prediction  became,  so 
to  speak,  scientific,  habitual,  clear  and  infallible: 
in  a  short  time,  having  nothing  more  to  foretell, 
it  would  die  of  inanition.  If,  for  instance,  it  was 
prophesied  to  me  that  I  must  die  in  the  course  of 


210  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

a  journey  in  Italy,  I  should  naturally  abandon  the 
journey;  therefore  it  could  not  have  been  pre- 
dicted to  me ;  and  thus  all  life  would  soon  be  noth- 
ing but  inaction,  pause  and  abstention,  a  sort  of 
vast  desert  where  the  embryos  of  still-born  events 
would  be  gathered  in  heaps  and  where  nothing 
would  grow  save  perhaps  one  or  two  more  or  less 
fortunate  enterprises  and  the  little  insignificant  in- 
cidents which  no  one  would  trouble  to  avoid.  But 
these  again  are  questions  to  which  there  is  no  solu- 
tion ;  and  we  will  not  pursue  them  further. 


IX 

HEROISM 


IX 
HEROISM 

1 

ONE  of  the  consoling  surprises  of  the  war  is 
the  unlooked-for  and,  so  to  speak,  univer- 
sal heroism  which  it  has  revealed  among 
all  the  nations  taking  part  in  it. 

We  were  rather  inclined  to  believe  that  courage, 
physical  and  moral  fortitude,  self-denial,  stoicism, 
the  renunciation  of  every  sort  of  comfort,  the 
faculty  of  self-sacrifice  and  the  power  of  facing 
death  belonged  only  to  the  more  primitive,  the  less 
happy,  the  less  intelligent  nations,  to  the  nations 
least  capable  of  reasoning,  of  appreciating  danger 
and  of  picturing  in  their  imagination  the  dreadful 
abyss  that  separates  this  life  from  the  life  unknown. 
We  were  even  almost  persuaded  that  war  would 
one  day  cease  for  lack  of  soldiers,  that  is  to  say,  of 
men  foolish  enough  or  unhappy  enough  to  risk  the 
only  absolute  realities — health,  physical   comfort, 

213 


214  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

an  unmipaired  body  and,  above  all,  life,  the  great- 
est of  early  possessions — for  the  sake  of  an  ideal 
which,  like  all  ideals,  is  more  or  less  invisible. 

And  this  argument  seemed  the  more  natural  and 
convincing  because,  as  existence  grew  gentler  and 
men's  nerves  more  sensitive,  the  means  of  destruc- 
tion by  war  showed  themselves  more  cruel,  ruthless 
and  irresistible.  It  seemed  more  and  more  probable 
that  no  man  would  ever  again  endure  the  infernal 
horrors  of  a  battlefield  and  that,  after  the  first 
slaughter,  the  opposing  armies,  officers  and  men 
alike,  all  seized  with  insuppressible  panic,  would 
turn  their  backs  upon  one  another,  in  simultaneous, 
supernatural  affright,  and  flee  from  unearthly  ter- 
rors exceeding  the  most  monstrous  anticipations 
of  those  who  had  let  them  loose. 


To  our  great  astonishment  the  very  opposite  is 
now  proclaimed. 

'  We  realise  with  amazement  that  until  to-day  we 
had  but  an  incomplete  and  inaccurate  idea  of  man's 
courage.  We  looked  upon  it  as  an  exceptional 
virtue  and  one  which  is  the  more  admired  as  being 
also  the  rarer  the  farther  we  go  back  in  history. 


HEROISM  215 

Remember,  for  instance,  Homer's  heroes,  the  an- 
cestors of  all  the  heroes  of  our  day.  Study  them 
closely.  These  models  of  antiquity,  the  first  pro- 
fessors, the  first  masters  of  bravery,  are  not  really 
very  brave.  They  have  a  wholesome  dread  of  be- 
ing hit  or  wounded  and  an  ingenuous  and  manifest 
fear  of  death.  Their  mighty  conflicts  are  declama- 
tory and  decorative  but  not  so  very  bloody;  they 
inflict  more  noise  than  pain  upon  their  adversaries, 
they  deliver  many  more  words  than  blows.  Their 
defensive  weapons — and  this  is  characteristic — are 
greatly  superior  to  their  arms  of  ofl'ence ;  and  death 
is  an  unusual,  unforeseen  and  almost  indecorous 
event  which  throws  the  ranks  into  disorder  and 
most  often  puts  a  stop  to  the  combat  or  provokes 
a  headlong  flight  that  seems  quite  natural.  As 
for  the  wounds,  these  are  enumerated  and  de- 
scribed, sung  and  deplored  as  so  many  remarkable 
phenomena.  On  the  other  hand,  the  most  dis- 
creditable routs,  the  most  shameful  panics  are  fre- 
quent; and  the  old  poet  relates  them  without  con- 
demning them,  as  ordinary  incidents  to  be  ascribed 
to  the  gods  and  inevitable  in  any  warfare. 

This  kind  of  courage  is  that  of  all  antiquity, 
more  or  less.    We  will  not  linger  over  it,  nor  delay 


216  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

to  consider  the  battles  of  the  Middle  Ages  or  the 
Renascence,  in  which  the  fiercest  hand-to-hand  en- 
counters of  the  mercenaries  often  left  not  more  than 
half-a-dozen  victims  on  the  field.  Let  us  rather 
come  straight  to  the  great  wars  of  the  Empire. 
Here  the  courage  displayed  begins  to  resemble  our 
own,  but  with  notable  differences.  In  the  first 
place,  those  concerned  were  solely  professionals. 
We  see  not  a  whole  nation  fighting,  but  a  delega- 
tion, a  martial  selection,  which,  it  is  true,  becomes 
gradually  more  extensive,  but  never,  as  in  our  time, 
embraces  every  man  between  eighteen  and  fifty 
years  of  age  capable  of  shouldering  a  weapon. 
Again — and  above  all — every  war  was  reduced  to 
two  or  three  pitched  battles,  that  is  to  say,  two  or 
three  culminating  moments:  immense  efforts,  but 
efforts  of  a  few  hours,  or  a  day  at  most,  towards 
which  the  combatants  directed  all  the  vigour  and 
all  the  heroism  accumulated  during  long  weeks  or 
months  of  preparation  and  waiting.  Afterwards, 
whether  the  result  was  victory  or  defeat,  the  fight- 
ing was  over;  relaxation,  respite  and  rest  followed; 
men  went  back  to  their  homes.  Destiny  must  not 
be  defied  more  than  once;  and  they  knew  that  in  the 


HEROISM  217 

most  terrible  affray  the  chances  of  escaping  death 
were  as  twenty  to  one. 

3 

Nowadays,  everything  is  changed;  and  death  it- 
self is  no  longer  what  it  was.  Formerly,  you  looked 
it  in  the  face,  you  knew  whence  it  came  and  who 
sent  it  to  you.  It  had  a  dreadful  aspect,  but  one 
that  remained  human.  Its  ways  were  not  un- 
known: its  long  spells  of  sleep,  its  brief  awaken- 
ings, its  bad  days  and  dangerous  hours.  At  pres- 
ent, to  all  these  horrors  it  adds  the  great,  intoler- 
able fear  of  mystery.  It  no  longer  has  any  aspect, 
no  longer  has  habits  or  spells  of  sleep  and  it  is  never 
still.  It  is  always  ready,  always  on  the  watch, 
everywhere  present,  scattered,  intangible  and 
dense,  stealthy  and  cowardly,  diffuse,  all-encom- 
passing, innumerous,  looming  at  every  point  of  the 
horizon,  rising  from  the  waters  and  falling  from 
the  skies,  indefatigable,  inevitable,  filling  the  whole 
of  space  and  time  for  days,  weeks  and  months  with- 
out a  minute's  lull,  without  a  second's  intermis- 
sion. Men  live,  move  and  sleep  in  the  meshes  of 
its  fatal  web.  They  know  that  the  least  step  to 
the  right  or  left,  a  head  bowed  or  lifted,  a  body 


218  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

bent  or  upright,  is  seen  bv  its  eyes  and  draws  its 
thunder. 

Hitherto  we  had  no  example  of  this  preponder- 
ance of  the  destructive  forces.  We  should  never 
have  believed  that  man's  nerves  could  resist  so 
great  a  trial.  The  nerves  of  the  bravest  man  are 
tempered  to  face  death  for  the  space  of  a  second, 
but  not  to  live  in  the  hourly  expectation  of  death 
and  nothing  else.  Heroism  was  once  a  sharp  and 
rugged  peak,  reached  for  a  moment  but  quitted 
forthwith,  for  mountain-peaks  are  not  inhabitable. 
To-day  it  is  a  boundless  plain,  as  uninhabitable  as 
the  peaks;  but  we  are  not  permitted  to  descend 
from  it.  And  so,  at  the  very  moment  when  man 
appeared  most  exhausted  and  enervated  by  the 
comforts  and  vices  of  civilisation,  at  the  moment 
when  he  was  happiest  and  therefore  most  selfish, 
when,  possessing  the  minimum  of  faith  and  vainly 
seeking  a  new  ideal,  he  seemed  less  capable  of  sacri- 
ficing himself  for  an  idea  of  any  kind,  he  finds  him- 
self suddenly  confronted  with  an  unprecedented 
danger,  which  he  is  almost  certain  that  the  most 
heroic  nations  of  history  would  not  have  faced  nor 
even  dreamed  of  facing,  whereas  he  does  not  even 
dream  that  it  is  possible  to  do  aught  but  face  it. 


HEROISM  219 

And  let  it  not  be  said  that  we  had  no  choice,  that 

the  danger  and  the  struggle  were  thrust  upon  us, 

that  we  had  to  defend  ourselves  or  die  and  that  in 

such  cases  there  are  no  cowards.     It  is  not  true: 

there  was,  there  always  has  been,  there  still  is  a 

choice. 

4 

It  is  not  man's  life  that  is  at  stake,  but  the  idea 
which  he  forms  of  the  honour,  the  happiness  and 
the  duties  of  his  life.  To  save  his  life  he  had  but 
to  submit  to  the  enemy;  the  invader  would  not 
have  exterminated  him.  You  cannot  exterminate 
a  great  people;  it  is  not  even  possible  to  enslave 
it  seriously  or  to  inflict  great  sorrow  upon  it  for 
long.  He  had  nothing  to  be  afraid  of  except  dis- 
grace. He  did  not  so  much  as  see  the  infamous 
temptation  appear  above  the  horizon  of  his  most 
instinctive  fears;  he  does  not  even  suspect  that  it 
is  able  to  exist;  and  he  will  never  perceive  it,  what- 
ever sacrifices  may  yet  await  him.  We  are  not, 
therefore,  speaking  of  a  heroism  that  would  be  but 
the  last  resource  of  despair,  the  heroism  of  the 
animal  driven  to  bay  and  fighting  blindly  to  delay 
death's  coming  for  a  moment.  No,  it  is  heroism 
freely  donned,  deliberately  and  unanimously  hailed, 


220  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

heroism  on  behalf  of  an  idea  and  a  sentiment,  in 
other  words,  heroism  in  its  clearest,  purest  and  most 
virginal  form,  a  disinterested  and  wholehearted 
sacrifice  for  that  which  men  regard  as  their  duty 
to  themselves,  to  their  kith  and  kin,  to  mankind  and 
to  the  future.  If  life  and  personal  safety  were 
more  precious  than  the  idea  of  honour,  of  patriotism 
and  of  fidelity  to  the  tradition  and  the  race,  there 
was,  I  repeat,  and  there  is  still  a  choice  to  be  made ; 
and  never  perhaps  in  any  war  was  the  choice  easier, 
for  never  did  men  feel  more  free,  never  indeed 
were  they  more  free,  to  choose. 

But  this  choice,  as  I  have  said,  did  not  dare  show 
its  faintest  shadow  on  the  lowest  horizons  of  even 
the  most  ignoble  consciences.  Are  you  quite  sure 
that  in  other  times  which  we  think  better  and  more 
virtuous  than  our  own  men  would  not  have  seen 
it,  would  not  have  spoken  of  it?  Can  you  find  a 
nation,  even  among  the  greatest,  which,  after  six 
months  of  a  war  compared  with  which  all  other 
wars  seem  child's-play,  of  a  war  which  threatens 
and  uses  up  all  that  nation's  life  and  all  its  posses- 
sions, can  you  find,  I  say,  in  history,  not  an  in- 
stance— for  there  is  no  instance — but  some  similar 
case  which  allows  you  to  presume  that  the  nation 


HEROISM  221 

would  not  have  faltered,  would  not  at  least,  were  it 
but  for  a  second,  have  looked  down  and  cast  its  eyes 
upon  an  inglorious  peace? 

5 

Nevertheless,  they  seemed  much  stronger  than 
we  are,  all  those  who  came  before  us.  They  were 
rude,  austere,  much  closer  to  nature,  poor  and  often 
unhappy.  They  had  a  simpler  and  a  more  rigid 
code  of  thought;  they  had  the  habit  of  physical 
suffering,  of  hardship  and  of  death.  But  I  do  not 
believe  that  any  one  dares  contend  that  these  men 
would  have  done  what  our  soldiers  are  now  doing, 
that  they  would  have  endured  what  is  being  en- 
dured all  around  us.  Are  we  not  entitled  to  con- 
clude from  this  that  civilisation,  contrary  to  what 
was  feared,  so  far  from  enervating,  depraving, 
weakening,  lowering  and  dwarfing  man,  elevates 
him,  purifies  him,  strengthens  him,  ennobles  him, 
makes  him  capable  of  acts  of  sacrifice,  generosity 
and  courage  which  he  did  not  know  before?  The 
fact  is  that  civilisation,  even  when  it  seems  to  en- 
tail corruption,  brings  intelligence  with  it  and  tliat 
intelligence,  in  days  of  trial,  stands  for  potential 
pride,  nobility  and  heroism.      That,  as  I  said  in 


222  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 


I 


the  beginning,  is  the  unexpected  and  consoling 
revelation  of  this  horrible  war :  we  can  rely  on  man 
implicitly,  place  the  greatest  trust  in  him,  nor  fear 
lest,  in  laying  aside  his  primitive  brutality,  he 
should  lose  his  manly  qualities.  The  greater  his 
progress  in  the  conquest  of  nature  and  the  greater 
his  apparent  attachment  to  material  welfare,  the 
more  does  he  become  capable  nevertheless,  uncon- 
sciously, deep  down  in  the  best  part  of  him,  of  self- 
detachment  and  of  self-sacrifice  for  the  common 
safety  and  the  more  does  he  understand  that  he  is 
nothing  when  he  compares  himself  with  the  eternal 
life  of  his  forbears  and  his  children. 

It  was  so  great  a  trial  that  we  dared  not,  before 
this  war,  have  contemplated  it.  The  future  of  the 
human  race  was  at  stake;  and  the  magnificent  re- 
sponse that  comes  to  us  from  every  side  reassures 
us  fully  as  to  the  issue  of  other  struggles,  more  for- 
midable still,  which  no  doubt  await  us  when  it  will 
be  a  question  no  longer  of  fighting  our  fellow-men 
but  rather  of  facing  the  more  powerful  and  cruel 
of  the  great  mysterious  enemies  that  nature  holds 
in  reserve  against  us.  If  it  be  true,  as  I  believe, 
that  humanity  is  worth  just  as  much  as  the  sum 
total  of  latent  heroism  which  it  contains,  then  we 


HEROISM  223 

may  declare  that  humanity  was  never  stronger  nor 
more  exemplary  than  now  and  that  it  is  at  this 
moment  reaching  one  of  its  hig'liest  points  and 
capable  of  braving  everything  and  hoping  every- 
thing. And  it  is  for  this  reason  that,  despite  our 
present  sadness,  we  are  entitled  to  congratulate 
ourselves  and  to  rejoice. 


ON    REREADING    THUCYDIDES 


X 

ON    REREADING    THUCYDIDES 


AT  moments  above  all  when  history  is  in  the 
making,  in  these  times  when  great  and  as 
yet  incomplete  pages  are  being  traced, 
pages  by  the  side  of  which  all  that  had  already  been 
written  will  pale,  it  is  a  good  and  salutary  thing  to 
turn  to  the  past  in  search  of  instruction,  warning 
and  encouragement.  In  this  respect,  the  unweary- 
ing and  implacable  war  which  Athens  kept  up 
against  Sparta  for  twenty-seven  j^ears,  with  the 
hegemony  of  Greece  for  a  stake,  presents  more 
than  one  analogy  with  that  which  we  ourselves  are 
waging  and  teaches  lessons  that  should  make  us 
reflect.  The  counsels  which  it  gives  us  are  all  the 
more  precious,  all  the  more  striking  or  profound 
inasmuch  as  the  war  is  narrated  to  us  by  a  man  who 
remains,  with  Tacitus,  despite  the  striving  of  the 
centuries,  the  progress  of  life  and  all  the  opportuni- 

227 


228  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

ties  of  doing  better,  the  greatest  historian  that  the 
earth  has  ever  known.  Thucydides  is  in  fact  the 
supreme  historian,  at  the  same  time  swift  and  de- 
tailed, scrupulously  sifting  his  evidence  but  giving 
free  play  to  intuition,  setting  forth  none  but  in- 
contestable facts,  yet  divining  the  most  secret  in- 
tentions and  embracing  at  a  glance  all  the  present 
and  future  political  consequences  of  the  events 
which  he  relates.  He  is  withal  one  of  the  most  per- 
fect writers,  one  of  the  most  admirable  artists  in 
the  literature  of  mankind;  and  from  this  point  of 
view,  in  an  entirely  different  and  almost  antagonis- 
tic world,  he  has  not  an  equal  save  Tacitus. 

But  Tacitus  is  before  everything  a  wonderful 
tragic  poet,  a  painter  of  foul  abysses,  of  fire  and 
blood,  who  can  lay  bare  the  souls  of  monsters  and 
their  crimes,  whereas  Thucydides  is  above  all  a 
great  political  moralist,  a  statesman  endowed  with 
extraordinary  perspicacity,  a  painter  of  the  open 
air  and  of  a  free  state,  who  portrays  the  minds  of 
those  sane,  ingenious,  subtle,  generous  and  marvel- 
lously intelligent  men  who  peopled  ancient  Greece. 
The  one  piles  on  the  gloom  with  a  lavish  hand, 
gathers  dark  shadows  which  he  pierces  at  each  sen- 
tence with   lightning-flashes,  but  remains  sombre 


ON  REREADING  THUCYDIDES     229 

and  oppressed  on  the  very  summits,  whereas  the 
other  condenses  nothing  but  light,  groups  together 
judgments  that  are  so  many  radiant  sheaves  and 
remains  luminous  and  breathes  freely  in  the  very 
depths.  The  first  is  passionate,  violent,  fierce,  in- 
dignant, bitter,  sincerely  but  pitilessly  unjust  and 
all  made  up  of  magnificent  animosities;  the  second 
is  always  even,  alw  ays  at  the  same  high  level,  which 
is  that  which  the  noblest  endeavour  of  human 
reason  can  attain.  He  has  no  passion  but  a  passion 
for  the  public  weal,  for  justice,  glory  and  intelli- 
gence. It  is  as  though  all  his  work  were  spread 
out  in  the  blue  sky;  and  even  his  famous  picture 
of  the  plague  of  Athens  seems  covered  with  sun- 
shine. 


But  there  is  no  need  to  follow  up  this  parallel, 
which  is  not  my  object.  I  will  not  dwell  any  longer 
■ — though  perhaps  I  may  return  to  them  one  day — 
upon  the  lessons  which  we  might  derive  from  that 
Peloponnesian  War,  in  which  the  position  of 
Athens  towards  Lacedfcmon  provides  more  than 
one  point  of  comparison  with  that  of  France  to- 
wards Germany.    True,  we  do  not  there  see,  as  in 


230  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

our  own  case,  civilised  nations  fighting  a  morally 
barbarian  people:  it  was  a  contest  between  Greeks 
and  Greeks,  displaying,  however,  in  the  same  physi- 
cal race  two  different  and  incompatible  spirits. 
Athens  stood  for  human  life  in  its  happiest  de- 
velopment, gracious,  cheerful  and  peaceful.  She 
took  no  serious  interest  except  in  the  happiness,  the 
imponderous  riches,  the  innocent  and  perfect  beau- 
ties, the  sweet  leisures,  the  glories  and  the  arts  of 
peace.  When  she  went  to  war,  it  was  as  though  in 
play,  with  the  smile  still  on  her  face,  looking  upon 
it  as  a  more  violent  pleasure  than  the  rest,  or  as  a 
duty  joyfully  accepted.  She  bound  herself  down 
to  no  discipline,  she  was  never  ready,  she  impro- 
vised everything  at  the  last  moment,  having,  "with 
habits  not  of  labour  but  of  ease  and  courage  not  of 
art  but  of  nature,"  as  Pericles  said,  "the  double  ad- 
vantage of  escaping  the  experience  of  hardships  in 
anticipation  and  of  facing  them  in  the  hour  of  need 
as  fearlessly  as  those  who  are  never  free  from 
them."  1 

For  Sparta,  on  the  other  hand,  life  was  nothing 

^This  and  the  later  passage  from  Pericles'  funeral  oration  I  have 
quoted  from  the  late  Richard  Crawley's  admirable  translation  of 
Thucydides'  Peloponnesian  War  now  published  in  the  Temple 
Classics.— A.  T.  de  M, 


ON  REREADING  THUCYDIDES     231 

but  endless  work,  an  incessant  strain,  having  no 
other  objective  than  war.  She  was  gloomy,  austere, 
strict,  morose,  ahiiost  ascetic,  an  enemy  to  every- 
thing that  excuses  man's  presence  on  this  earth,  a 
nation  of  spoilers,  looters,  incendiaries  and  devas- 
tators, a  nest  of  wasps  beside  a  swarm  of  bees,  a 
perpetual  menace  and  danger  to  everything  around 
her,  as  hard  upon  herself  as  upon  others  and  boast- 
ing an  ideal  which  may  appear  lofty  if  it  be  man's 
ideal  to  be  unliappy  and  the  contented  slave  of 
unrelenting  discipline.  On  the  other  hand,  she 
differed  entirely  from  those  whom  we  are  now  fight- 
ing in  that  she.  was  generally  honest,  loyal  and 
upright  and  showed  a  certain  respect  for  the  gods 
and  their  temples,  for  treaties  and  for  international 
law.  It  is  none  the  less  true  that,  if  she  had  from 
the  beginning  reigned  alone  or  without  encounter- 
ing a  long  resistance,  Hellas  would  never  have  been 
the  Hellas  that  we  know.  She  would  have  left  in 
history  but  a  precarious  trace  of  useless  warlike 
virtues  and  of  minor  combats  without  glory;  and 
mankind  would  not  have  possessed  that  centre  of 
light  towards  which  it  turns  to  this  day. 


232  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

3 

What  was  to  be  the  issue  of  this  war?  Here 
begins  the  lesson  which  it  were  well  to  study  tho- 
roughly. It  would  seem  indeed  as  if,  with  the  first 
encounters  in  that  conflict,  as  in  our  own,  the  in- 
explicable will  that  governs  nations  was  favourable 
to  the  less  civilised ;  and  in  fact  Lacedeemon  gained 
the  upper  hand,  at  least  temporarily  and  sufficiently 
to  abuse  her  victory  to  such  a  degree  that  she  soon 
lost  its  fruits.  But  Athens  held  the  evil  will  in 
check  for  seven-and-twenty  years;  for  twenty- 
seven  summers  and  twenty-seven  winters,  to  use 
Thucydides'  reckoning,  she  proved  to  us  that  it 
is  possible,  in  defiance  of  probability,  to  fight 
against  what  seems  written  in  the  book  of  heaven 
and  hell.  Nay  more,  at  a  time  when  Sparta,  whose 
sole  industry,  whose  sole  training,  whose  only  rea- 
son for  existence  and  whose  only  ideal  was  war, 
was  hugging  the  thought  of  crushing  in  a  few  weeks 
under  the  weight  of  her  formidable  hoplites,  a  frivo- 
lous, careless  and  ill-organised  city,  Athens,  not 
withstanding  the  treacherous  blow  which  fate  dealt 
her  by  sending  a  plague  that  carried  off  a  third  of 
her  civil  population  and  a  quarter  of  her  army. 


ON  REREADING  THUCYDIDES     233 

Athens  for  seventeen  years  definitely  held  victory 
in  her  grasp.  During  this  period,  she  more  than 
once  had  Laced^emon  at  her  mercy  and  did  not 
begin  to  descend  the  stony  path  of  ruin  and  defeat 
until  after  the  disastrous  expedition  to  Sicily,  in 
which,  carried  away  by  her  rhetoricians  and  bitten 
with  inconceivable  folly,  she  hurled  all  her  fleet,  all 
her  soldiers  and  all  her  wealth  into  a  remote,  un- 
profitable, unknown  and  desperate  adventure. 
She  resisted  the  decline  of  her  fortunes  for  yet  an- 
other ten  years,  heaping  up  her  sins  against  wisdom 
and  simple  common  sense  and  with  her  own  hands 
drawing  tighter  the  knot  that  was  to  strangle  her, 
as  though  to  show  us  that  destiny  is  for  the  most 
part  but  our  own  madness  and  that  what  we  call 
unavoidable  fatality  has  its  roots  only  in  mistakes 
that  might  easily  be  avoided. 

4 

To  point  this  moral  was  again  not  my  real  ob- 
ject. In  these  days  when  we  have  so  many  sor- 
rows to  assuage  and  so  many  deaths  to  honour,  I 
wished  merely  to  recall  a  page  written  over  two 
thousand  years  ago,  to  the  glory  of  the  Athenian 
heroes  who  fell  for  their  countrv  in  the  first  bat- 


234  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

ties  of  that  war.  According  to  the  custom  of  the 
Greeks,  the  bones  of  the  dead  that  had  been  burnt 
on  the  battlefield  were  solemnly  brought  back  to 
Athens  at  the  end  of  the  year ;  and  the  people  chose 
the  greatest  speaker  in  the  city  to  deliver  the  fu- 
neral oration.  This  honour  fell  to  Pericles  son  of 
Xanthippus,  the  Pericles  of  the  golden  age  of 
human  beauty.  After  pronouncing  a  well-merited 
and  magnificent  eulogium  on  the  Athenian  nation 
and  institutions,  he  concluded  with  the  following 
words : 

"Indeed,  if  I  have  dwelt  at  some  length  upon 
the  character  of  our  country,  it  has  been  to  show 
that  our  stake  in  the  struggle  is  not  the  same  as 
theirs  who  have  no  such  blessing  to  lose  and  also 
that  the  panegyric  of  the  men  over  whom  I  am  now 
speaking  might  be  by  definite  proofs  established. 
That  panegyric  is  now  in  a  great  measure  com- 
plete ;  for  the  Athens  that  I  have  celebrated  is  only 
what  the  heroism  of  these  and  their  like  have  made 
her,  men  whose  fame,  unlike  that  of  most  Hellenes, 
will  be  found  to  be  only  commensurate  with  their 
deserts.  And,  if  a  test  of  worth  be  wanted,  it  is 
to  be  found  in  their  closing  scene ;  and  this  not  only 


ON  REREADING  THUCYDIDES     235 

in  the  cases  in  which  it  set  the  final  seal  upon  their 
merit,  but  also  in  those  in  which  it  gave  the  first 
intimation  of  their  having  any.  For  there  is  jus- 
tice in  the  claim  that  steadfastness  in  his  country's 
battles  should  be  as  a  cloak  to  cover  a  man's  other 
imperfections,  since  the  good  action  has  blotted  out 
the  bad  and  his  merit  as  a  citizen  more  than  out- 
weighed his  demerits  as  an  individual.  But  none 
of  these  allowed  either  wealth  with  its  prospect  of 
future  enjoyment  to  unnerve  his  spirit,  or  poverty 
with  its  hope  of  a  day  of  freedom  and  riches  to 
tempt  him  to  shrink  from  danger.  No,  holding 
that  vengeance  upon  their  enemies  was  more  to  be 
desired  that  any  personal  blessings  and  reckon- 
ing this  to  be  the  most  glorious  of  hazards,  they 
joyfully  determined  to  accept  the  risk,  to  make 
sure  of  their  vengeance  and  to  let  their  wishes 
wait;  and,  while  committing  to  hope  the  uncer- 
tainty of  final  success,  in  the  business  before  them 
they  thought  fit  to  act  boldly  and  trust  in  them- 
selves. Thus  choosing  to  die  resisting  rather  than 
to  live  submitting,  they  fled  only  from  dishonour, 
but  met  danger  face  to  face  and,  after  one  brief 
moment,  while  at  the  summit  of  their  fortune,  es- 
caped not  from  their  fear  but  from  their  glory. 


236  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

"So  died  these  men  as  became  Athenians.  You, 
their  survivors,  must  determine  to  have  as  unfalter- 
ing a  resolution  in  the  field,  though  you  may  pray 
that  it  may  have  a  happier  issue.  And,  not  con- 
tented with  ideas  derived  only  from  words  of  the 
advantages  which  are  bound  up  with  the  defence 
of  your  country,  though  these  would  furnish  a 
valuable  text  to  a  speaker  even  before  an  audience 
so  alive  to  them  as  the  present,  you  must  yourselves 
realise  the  power  of  Athens  and  feed  your  eyes 
upon  her  from  day  to  day,  till  love  of  her  fills  your 
hearts ;  and  then,  when  all  her  greatness  shall  break 
upon  you,  you  must  reflect  that  it  was  by  courage, 
sense  of  duty  and  a  keen  feeling  of  honour  in  ac- 
tion that  men  were  enabled  to  win  all  this  and  that 
no  personal  failure  in  an  enterprise  could  make 
them  consent  to  deprive  their  country  of  their 
valour,  but  they  laid  it  at  her  feet  as  the  most 
glorious  contribution  that  they  could  ofi'er.  For 
by  this  offering  of  their  lives  made  in  common  by 
them  all  they  each  of  them  individually  received 
that  renown  which  never  grows  old  and,  for  a  sepul- 
chre, not  so  much  that  in  which  their  bones  have 
been  deposited,  but  that  noblest  of  shrines  wherein 
their  glory  is  laid  up  to  be  eternally  remembered 


ON  REREADING  THUCYDIDES     237 

upon  every  occasion  on  which  deed  or  story  shall 
call  for  its  commemoration.  For  heroes  have  the 
whole  earth  for  their  tomb;  and  in  lands  far  from 
their  own,  where  the  column  with  its  epitaph  de- 
clares it,  there  is  enshrined  in  every  breast  a  record 
unwritten  with  no  tablet  to  preserve  it,  except  that 
of  the  heart.  These  take  as  your  model  and,  judg- 
ing happiness  to  be  the  fruit  of  freedom  and  free- 
dom of  valour,  never  decline  the  dangers  of  war. 
For  it  is  not  the  miserable  that  would  most  justly  be 
unsparing  of  their  lives:  these  have  nothing  to 
hope  for;  it  is  rather  they  to  whom  continued  life 
may  bring  reverses  as  yet  unknown  and  to  whom  a 
fall,  if  it  came,  would  be  most  tremendous  in  its 
consequences.  And  surely,  to  a  man  of  spirit,  the 
degradation  of  cowardice  must  be  immeasurably 
more  grievous  than  the  unfelt  death  which  strikes 
him  in  the  midst  of  his  strength  and  patriotism  I 

"Comfort,  therefore,  not  condolence,  is  what  I 
have  to  offer  to  the  parents  of  the  dead  who  may 
be  here.  Numberless  are  the  chances  to  wliich, 
as  they  know,  the  life  of  man  is  subject;  but  fortu- 
nate indeed  are  they  who  draw  for  their  lot  a  death 
so  glorious  as  that  which  has  caused  your  mourn- 
ing and  to  whom  life  has  been  so  exactly  measured 


238  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

as  to  terminate  in  the  happiness  in  which  it  has 
been  passed.  Still  I  know  that  this  is  a  hard  say- 
ing, especially  when  those  are  in  question  of  whom 
you  will  be  constantly  reminded  by  seeing  in  the 
homes  of  others  blessing  of  which  once  you  also 
boasted ;  for  grief  is  felt  not  so  much  for  the  want 
of  what  we  have  never  known  as  for  the  loss  of 
that  to  which  we  have  been  long  accustomed.  Yet 
you  who  are  still  of  an  age  to  beget  children  must 
bear  up  in  the  hope  of  having  others  in  their  stead : 
not  only  will  they  help  you  to  forget  those  whom 
you  have  lost,  but  they  will  be  to  the  state  at  once 
a  reinforcement  and  a  security;  for  never  can  a 
fair  or  just  policy  be  expected  of  the  citizen  who 
does  not,  like  his  fellows,  bring  to  the  decision  the 
interests  and  apprehensions  of  a  father.  While 
those  of  you  who  have  passed  your  prime  must 
congratulate  yourselves  with  the  thought  that  the 
best  part  of  your  hfe  was  fortunate  and  that  the 
brief  span  that  remains  will  be  cheered  by  the 
fame  of  the  departed.  For  it  is  only  the  love  of 
honour  that  never  grows  old ;  and  honour  it  is,  not 
gain,  as  some  would  have  felt  it,  that  rejoices  the 
heart  of  age  and  helplessness.  .  .  . 

"And,  now  that  you  have  brought  to  a  close 


ON  REREADING  THUCYDIDES     239 

your   lamentations    for   your   relatives,   you   may 
depart." 

These  words  spoken  twenty-three  centuries  ago 
ring  in  our  hearts  as  though  they  were  uttered 
yesterday.  They  celebrate  our  dead  better  than 
could  any  eloquence  of  ours,  however  poignant  it 
might  be.  Let  us  bow  before  their  paramount 
beauty  and  before  the  great  people  that  could  ap- 
plaud and  understand. 


XI 
THE  DEAD  DO  NOT  DIE 


XI 

THE  DEAD  DO  NOT  DIE 

1 

WHEN  we  behold  the  terrible  loss  of  so 
many  young  lives,  when  we  see  so  many 
incarnations  of  physical  and  moral 
vigour,  of  intellect  and  of  glorious  promise  piti- 
lessly cut  off  in  their  first  flower,  we  are  on  the 
verge  of  despair.  Never  before  have  the  fairest 
energies  and  aspirations  of  men  been  flung  reck- 
lessly and  incessantly  into  an  abyss  whence  comes 
no  sound  or  answer.  Never  since  it  came  into 
existence  has  humanity  squandered  its  treasure,  its 
substance  and  its  prospects  so  lavishly.  For  more 
than  twelve  months,  on  every  battlefield,  where  the 
bravest,  the  truest,  the  most  ardent  and  self-sacri- 
ficing are  necessarily  the  first  to  die  and  where 
the  less  courageous,  the  less  generous,  the  weak, 
the  ailing,  in  a  word  the  less  desirable,  alone  pos- 
sess some  chance  of  escax)ing  the  carnage,  for  over 

243 


244  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

twelve  months  a  sort  of  monstrous  inverse  selection 
has  been  in  operation,  one  which  seems  to  be  de- 
liberately seeking  the  downfall  of  the  human  race. 
And  we  wonder  uneasily  what  the  state  of  the 
world  will  be  after  the  great  trial  and  what  will 
be  left  of  it  and  what  will  be  the  future  of  this 
stunted  race,  shorn  of  all  the  best  and  noblest 
part  of  it. 

The  problem  is  certainly  one  of  the  darkest  that 
has  ever  vexed  the  minds  of  men.  It  contains  a 
material  truth  before  which  we  remain  defenceless; 
and,  if  we  accept  it  as  it  stands,  we  can  discover 
no  remedy  for  the  evil  that  threatens  us.  But 
material  and  tangible  truths  are  never  anything 
but  a  more  or  less  salient  angle  of  greater  and 
deeper-lying  truths.  And  on  the  other  hand  man- 
kind appears  to  be  such  a  necessary  and  indestruc- 
tible force  of  nature  that  it  has  always,  hitherto,  not 
only  survived  the  most  desperate  ordeals,  but  suc- 
ceeded in  benefiting  by  them  and  emerging  greater 
and  stronger  than  before. 


We  know  that  peace  is  better  than  war;  it  were 
madness  to  compare  the  two.     We  know  that,  if 


THE  DEAD  DO  NOT  DIE        245 

this  cataclysm  let  loose  by  an  act  of  unutterable 
folly  had  not  come  upon  the  world,  mankind  would 
doubtless  have  reached  ere  long  a  zenith  of  wonder- 
ful achievement  whose  manifestations  it  is  impos- 
sible to  foreshadow.  We  know  that,  if  a  third  or  a 
fourth  part  of  the  fabulous  sums  expended  on  ex- 
termination and  destruction  had  been  devoted  to 
works  of  peace,  all  the  iniquities  that  poison  the 
air  we  breathe  would  have  been  triumphantly  re- 
dressed and  that  the  social  question,  the  one  great 
question,  the  matter  of  life  and  death  which  justice 
demands  that  posterity  should  face,  would  have 
found  its  definite  solution,  once  and  for  all,  in  a 
happiness  which  now  perhaps  even  our  sons  and 
grandsons  will  not  realise.  We  know  that  the  dis- 
appearance of  two  or  three  million  young  exis- 
tences, cut  down  when  they  were  on  the  point  of 
bearing  fruit,  will  leave  in  history  a  void  that  will 
not  be  easily  filled,  even  as  we  know  that  among 
those  dead  were  mighty  intellects,  treasures  of 
genius  which  will  not  come  back  again  and  which 
contained  inventions  and  discoveries  that  will  now 
perhaps  be  lost  to  us  for  centuries.  We  know  that 
we  shall  never  grasp  the  consequences  of  this 
thrusting  back  of  progress  and  of  this  unprccc- 


246  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

dented  devastation.  But,  granting  all  this,  it  is 
a  good  thing  to  recover  our  balance  and  stand 
upon  our  feet.  There  is  no  irreparable  loss. 
Everything  is  transformed,  nothing  perishes  and 
that  which  seems  to  be  hurled  into  destruction  is 
not  destroyed  at  all.  Our  moral  world,  even  as 
our  physical  world,  is  a  vast  but  hermetically-sealed 
sphere,  whence  naught  can  issue,  whence  naught 
can  fall  to  be  dissolved  in  space.  All  that  exists, 
all  that  comes  into  being  upon  this  earth  remains 
there  and  bears  fruit ;  and  the  most  appalling  wast- 
age is  but  material  or  spiritual  riches  flung  away 
for  an  instant,  to  fall  to  the  ground  again  in  a 
new  form.  There  is  no  escape  or  leakage,  no  fil- 
tering through  cracks,  no  missing  the  mark,  not 
even  waste  or  neglect.  All  this  heroism  poured 
out  on  every  side  does  not  leave  our  planet;  and 
the  reason  why  the  courage  of  our  fighters  seems 
so  general  and  yet  so  extraordinary  is  that  all  the 
might  of  the  dead  has  passed  into  those  who  sur- 
vive. All  those  forces  of  wisdom,  patience,  honour 
and  self-sacrifice  which  increase  day  by  day  and 
which  we  ourselves,  who  are  far  from  the  field  of 
danger,    feel   rising   within   us   without   knowing 


THE  DEAD  DO  NOT  DIE        247 

whence  they  come  are  nothing  but  the  souls  of  the 
heroes  gathered  and  absorbed  by  our  own  souls. 

3 

It  is  well  at  times  to  contemplate  invisible  things 
as  though  we  saw  them  with  our  eyes.  This  was 
the  aim  of  all  the  great  religions,  when  they  but 
represented  under  forms  appropriate  to  the  man- 
ners of  their  day  the  latent  deep,  instinctive  truths, 
the  general  and  essential  truths  which  are  the  guid- 
ing principles  of  mankind.  All  have  felt  and 
recognised  that  loftiest  of  all  ti*uths,  the  communion 
of  the  living  and  the  dead,  and  have  given  it  vari- 
ous names  designating  the  same  mysterious  verity: 
the  Christians  know  it  as  revival  of  merit,  the 
Buddhists  as  reincarnation,  or  transmigration  of 
souls,  and  the  Japanese  as  Shintoism,  or  ancestor- 
worship.  The  last  are  more  fully  convinced  than 
any  other  nation  that  the  dead  do  not  cease  to  live 
and  that  they  direct  our  actions,  are  exalted  by 
our  virtues  and  become  gods. 

Lafcadio  Hearn,  the  writer  who  has  most  closely 
studied  and  understood  that  wonderful  ancestor- 
worship,  says: 

"One  of  the  surprises  of  our  future  will  certainly 


248  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

be  a  return  to  beliefs  and  ideas  long  ago  abandoned 
upon  the  mere  assumption  that  they  contained 
no  truths — beliefs  still  called  barbarous,  pagan, 
mediaeval,  by  those  who  condemn  them  out  of  tradi- 
tional habit.  Year  after  year  the  researches  of 
science  afford  us  new  proof  that  the  savage,  the 
barbarian,  the  idolater,  the  monk,  each  and  all  have 
arrived,  by  different  paths,  as  near  to  some  one 
point  of  eternal  truth  as  any  thinker  of  the  nine- 
teenth century.  We  are  now  learning,  also,  that 
the  theories  of  the  astrologers  and  of  the  alchemists 
were  but  partially,  not  totally,  wrong.  We  have 
reason  even  to  suppose  that  no  dream  of  the  in- 
visible world  has  ever  been  dreamed, — that  no 
hypothesis  of  the  unseen  has  ever  been  imagined, — 
which  future  science  will  not  prove  to  have  con- 
tained some  germ  of  reality."  ^ 

There  are  many  things  which  might  be  added  to 
these  lines,  notably  all  that  the  most  recent  of  our 
sciences,  metaphysics,  is  engaged  in  discovering 
with  regard  to  the  miraculous  faculties  of  our  sub- 
consciousness. 

^Kokoro:     Hints    and   Echoes    of    Japanese    Life,    chapter    xiv.: 
"Some  Thoughts  about  Ancestor- Worship." 


THE  DEAD  DO  NOT  DIE        249 

4  * 

But,  to  return  more  directly  to  what  we  were 
saying,  was  it  not  observed  that,  after  the  great 
battles  of  the  Napoleonic  era,  the  birth-rate  in- 
creased in  an  extraordinary  manner,  as  though  the 
lives  suddenly  cut  short  in  their  prime  were  not 
really  dead  and  were  eager  to  be  back  again  in  our 
midst  and  complete  their  career?  If  we  could  fol- 
low with  our  eyes  all  that  is  happening  in  the 
spiritual  world  that  rises  above  us  on  every  side, 
we  should  no  doubt  see  that  it  is  the  same  with 
the  moral  force  that  seems  to  be  lost  on  the  field 
of  slaughter.  It  knows  where  to  go,  it  knows  its 
goal,  it  does  not  hesitate.  All  that  our  wonderful 
dead  relinquished  they  bequeath  to  us;  and,  when 
they  die  for  us,  they  leave  us  their  lives  not  in  any 
strained,  metaphorical  sense,  but  in  a  ver}'  real  and 
direct  way.  Virtue  goes  out  of  every  man  who  falls 
while  performing  a  deed  of  glory;  and  that  virtue 
drops  down  upon  us;  and  nothing  of  him  is  lost 
and  nothing  evaporates  in  the  shock  of  a  prema- 
ture end.  He  gives  us  in  one  solitary  and  mighty 
stroke  what  he  would  have  given  us  in  a  long  life 
of  duty  and  love.     Death  does  not  injure  life;  it  is 


250  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

powerless  against  it.  Life's  aggregate  never 
changes.  What  death  takes  from  those  who  fall 
enters  into  those  who  are  left  standing.  The  num- 
ber of  lamps  grows  less,  but  the  flame  rises  higher. 
Death  is  in  no  wise  the  gainer  so  long  as  there  are 
living  men.  The  more  it  exercises  its  ravages,  the 
more  it  increases  the  intensity  of  that  which  it  can- 
not touch;  the  more  it  pursues  its  phantom  vic- 
tories, the  better  does  it  prove  to  us  that  man  will 
end  by  conquering  death. 


XII 
IN  MEMORIAM 


XII 

IN  MEMORIAM 

THOSE  who  die  for  their  country  should 
not  be  numbered  with  the  dead.  We 
must  call  them  by  another  name.  They 
have  nothing  in  common  with  those  who  end  in  their 
beds  a  life  that  is  worn  out,  a  life  almost  always 
too  long  and  often  useless.  Death,  which  every 
elsewhere  is  but  the  object  of  fear  and  horror, 
bringing  naught  but  nothingness  and  despair,  this 
death,  on  the  field  of  battle,  in  the  clash  of  glory, 
becomes  more  beautiful  than  birth  and  exhales  a 
grace  greater  than  that  of  love.  No  life  will  ever 
give  what  their  youth  is  offering  us,  that  youth 
which  gives  in  one  moment  the  days  and  the  years 
that  lay  before  it.  There  is  no  sacrifice  to  be  com- 
pared with  that  which  they  have  made;  for  which 
reason  there  is  no  glory  that  can  soar  so  high  as 
theirs,  no  gratitude  that  can  surpass  the  gratitude 
which  we  owe  them.  They  have  not  only  a  riglit 
to  the  foremost  place  in  our  memories :  they  have  a 

253 


254  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

right  to  all  our  memories  and  to  everything  that  we 
are,  since  we  exist  only  through  them. 

And  now  it  is  in  us  that  their  life,  so  suddenly 
cut  short,  must  resume  its  course.  Whatever  be 
our  faith  and  whatever  the  God  whom  it  adores, 
one  thing  is  almost  certain  and,  in  spite  of  all  ap- 
pearances, is  daily  becoming  more  certain:  it  is  that 
death  and  life  are  commingled;  the  dead  and  the 
living  alike  are  but  moments,  hardly  dissimilar,  of 
a  single  and  infinite  existence  and  members  of  one 
immortal  family.  They  are  not  beneath  the  earth, 
in  the  depths  of  their  tombs;  they  lie  deep  in  our 
hearts,  where  all  that  they  once  were  will  continue 
to  live  and  to  act;  and  they  live  in  us  even  as  we 
die  in  them.  They  see  us,  they  understand  us  more 
nearly  than  when  they  were  in  our  arms;  let  us 
then  keep  a  watch  upon  ourselves,  so  that  they 
witness  no  actions  and  hear  no  words  but  words 
and  actions  that  shall  be  worthy  of  them. 


XIII 
THE    LIFE    OF    THE   DEAD 


XIII 
THE  LIFE  OF  THE  DEAD 


THE  other  day  I  went  to  see  a  woman 
whom  I  knew  before  the  war — she  was 
happy  then — and  who  had  lost  her  only 
son  in  one  of  the  battles  in  the  Argonne.  She  was 
a  wadow,  almost  a  poor  woman;  and,  now  that  this 
son,  her  pride  and  her  joy,  was  no  more,  she  no 
longer  had  any  reason  for  living.  I  hesitated  to 
knock  at  her  door.  Was  I  not  about  to  witness 
one  of  those  hopeless  griefs  at  whose  feet  all  words 
fall  to  the  ground  like  shameful  and  insulting  lies? 
Which  of  us  to-day  is  not  familiar  with  these 
mournful  interviews,  this  dismal  duty? 

To  my  great  astonishment,  she  offered  me  her 
hand  with  a  kindly  smile.  Her  eyes,  to  which  I 
hardly  dared  raise  my  own,  were  free  of  tears. 

"You  have  come  to   speak  of  liim,"   she   said, 

257 


258  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

in  a  cheerful  tone;  and  it  was  as  though  her  voice 
had  grown  younger. 

"Alas,  yes!  I  had  heard  of  your  sorrow;  and 
I  have  come  ..." 

"Yes,  I  too  believed  that  my  unhappiness  was 
irreparable;  but  now  I  know  that  he  is  not  dead." 

"What!  He  is  not  dead?  Do  you  mean  that 
the  news  .  .  .  ?  But  I  thought  that  the 
body  ..." 

"Yes,  his  body  is  over  there;  and  I  have  even 
a  photograph  of  his  grave.  Let  me  show  it  to 
you.  See,  that  cross  on  the  left,  the  fourth  cross: 
that  is  where  he  is  lying.  One  of  his  friends,  who 
buried  him,  sent  me  this  card  and  gave  me  all 
the  details.  He  suffered  no  pain.  There  was 
not  even  a  death-struggle.  And  he  has  told  me 
so  himself.  He  is  quite  astonished  that  death 
should  be  so  easy,  so  slight  a  thing.  .  .  .  You 
do  not  understand?  Yes,  I  see  what  it  is:  you 
are  just  as  I  used  to  be,  as  all  the  others  are.  I 
do  not  explain  the  matter  to  the  others;  what 
would  be  the  use  ?  They  do  not  wish  to  understand. 
But  you,  you  will  understand.  He  is  more  alive 
than  he  ever  was;  he  is  free  and  happy.  He  does 
just  as  he  likes.     He  tells  me  that  one  cannot 


THE  LIFE  OF  THE  DEAD      259 

imagine  what  a  release  death  is,  what  a  weight 
it  removes  from  you,  nor  the  joy  which  it  brings. 
He  comes  to  see  me  when  I  call  him.  He  loves 
especially  to  come  in  the  evening;  and  we  chat 
as  we  used  to.  He  has  not  altered;  he  is  just 
as  he  was  on  the  day  when  he  w^nt  away,  only 
younger,  stronger,  handsomer.  We  have  never 
been  happier,  more  united,  nearer  to  one  another. 
He  divines  my  thoughts  before  I  utter  them.  He 
knows  everything;  he  sees  everything;  but  he 
cannot  tell  me  everything  he  knows.  He  maintains 
that  I  must  be  wanting  to  follow  him  and  that  I 
must  wait  for  my  hour.  And,  while  I  wait,  we  are 
living  in  a  happiness  greater  than  that  which  was 
ours  before  the  war,  a  happiness  which  nothing 
can  ever  trouble  again.  .  .  ." 

Those  about  her  pitied  the  poor  woman;  and, 
as  she  did  not  weep,  as  she  was  gay  and  smiling, 
they  believed  her  mad. 

2 

Was  she  as  mad  as  they  thought?  At  the 
present  moment,  the  great  questions  of  the  world 
beyond  the  grave  are  pressing  upon  us  from  every 
side.     It  is  probable  that,  since  the  world  began, 


260  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

there  have  never  been  so  many  dead  as  now.  The 
empire  of  death  was  never  so  mighty,  so  terrible; 
it  is  for  us  to  defend  and  enlarge  the  empire  of 
life.  In  the  presence  of  his  mother,  which  are  right 
and  which  are  wrong,  those  who  are  convinced  that 
their  dead  are  for  ever  swept  out  of  existence,  or 
those  who  are  persuaded  that  their  dead  do  not 
cease  to  live,  who  believe  that  they  see  them  and 
hear  them?  Do  we  know  what  it  is  that  dies  in 
our  dead,  or  even  if  anything  dies?  Whatever 
our  religious  faith  may  be,  there  is  at  any  rate 
one  place  where  they  cannot  die.  That  place  is 
within  ourselves ;  and,  if  this  unhappy  mother  went 
beyond  the  truth,  she  was  yet  nearer  to  it  than 
those  despairing  ones  who  nourish  the  mournful 
certainty  that  nothing  survives  of  those  whom  they 
loved.  She  felt  too  keenly  what  we  do  not  feel 
keenly  enough.  She  remembered  too  much;  and 
we  do  not  know  how  to  remember.  Between  the 
two  errors  there  is  room  for  a  great  truth;  and, 
if  we  have  to  choose,  hers  is  the  error  towards 
which  we  should  lean.  Let  us  learn  to  acquire 
through  reason  that  which  a  wise  madness  bestowed 
on  her.  Let  us  learn  from  her  to  live  with  our 
dead  and  to  live  with  them  without  sadness  and 


THE  LIFE  OF  THE  DEAD      261 

without  terror.  They  do  not  ask  for  tears,  but 
for  a  happy  and  confident  affection.  Let  us  learn 
from  her  to  resuscitate  those  whom  we  regret.  She 
called  to  hers,  while  we  repulse  ours ;  we  are  afraid 
of  them  and  are  surprised  that  they  lose  heart  and 
pale  and  fade  away  and  leave  us  for  ever.  They 
need  love  as  much  as  do  the  living.  They  die,  not 
at  the  moment  when  they  sink  into  the  grave,  but 
gradually  as  they  sink  into  oblivion,  and  it  is 
oblivion  alone  that  makes  the  separation  irre- 
vocable. We  should  not  allow  it  to  heap  itself 
above  them.  It  would  be  enough  to  vouchsafe 
them  each  day  a  single  one  of  those  thoughts  which 
we  bestow  uncounted  upon  so  many  useless  objects: 
they  would  no  longer  think  of  leaving  us;  they 
would  remain  around  us  and  we  should  no  longer 
understand  what  a  tombstone  is,  for  there  is  no 
tomb,  however  deep,  whose  stone  may  not  be  raised 
and  whose  dust  dispersed  by  a  thought. 

There  would  be  no  difference  between  the  living 
and  the  dead  if  we  but  knew  how  to  remember. 
There  would  be  no  more  dead.  The  best  of  what 
they  were  dwells  with  us  after  fate  has  taken  them 
from  us;  all  their  past  is  ours;  and  it  is  wider 
than  the   present,  more  certain  than  the  future. 


262  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

Material  presence  is  not  everything  in  this  world; 
and  we  can  dispense  with  it  without  despairing. 
We  do  not  mourn  those  who  live  in  lands  which  we 
shall  never  visit,  because  we  know  that  it  depends 
on  us  whether  we  go  to  find  them.  Let  it  be  the 
same  with  our  dead.  Instead  of  believing  that 
they  have  disappeared  never  to  return,  tell  your- 
selves that  they  are  in  a  country  to  which  you 
yourself  will  assuredly  go  soon,  a  country  not  so 
very  far  away.  And  while  waiting  for  the  time 
when  you  will  go  there  once  and  for  all,  you  may 
visit  them  in  thought  as  easily  as  if  they  were  still 
in  a  region  inhabited  by  the  living.  The  memory 
of  the  dead  is  even  more  alive  than  that  of  the 
living ;  it  is  as  though  they  were  assisting  our  mem- 
ory, as  though  they,  on  their  side,  were  making  a 
mysterious  effort  to  join  hands  with  us  on  ours. 
One  feels  that  they  are  far  more  powerful  than 
the  absent  who  continue  to  breathe  as  we  do. 


Try  then  to  recall  those  whom  you  have  lost, 
before  it  is  too  late,  before  they  have  gone  too 
far;  and  you  will  see  that  they  will  come  much 
closer  to  your  heart,  that  they  will  belong  to  you 


THE  LIFE  OF  THE  DEAD       263 

more  truly,  that  they  are  as  real  as  when  they  were 
in  the  flesh.  In  putting  off  this  last,  they  have 
but  discarded  the  moments  in  which  they  loved  us 
least  or  in  which  we  did  not  love  at  all.  Now  thev 
are  pure ;  they  are  clothed  only  in  the  fairest  hours 
of  life;  they  no  longer  possess  faults,  littlenesses, 
oddities;  they  can  no  longer  fall  away,  or  deceive 
themselves,  or  give  us  pain.  They  care  for  noth- 
ing now  but  to  smile  upon  us,  to  encompass  us  with 
love,  to  bring  us  a  happiness  drawn  without  stint 
from  a  past  which  they  live  again  beside  us. 


XIV 
THE    WAR   AND    THE   PROPHETS 


XIV 
THE  WAR  AND  THE  PROPHETS 


AT  the  end  an  essay  occuring  in  The  Un- 
known Guest  and  entitled,  The  Know- 
ledge of  the  Future,  in  which  I  examined 
a  certain  number  of  phenomena  relating  to  the 
anticipatory  perception  of  events,  such  as  present- 
ments, premonitions,  precognitions,  predictions, 
etc.,  I  concluded  in  nearly  the  following  terms: 

"To  sum  up,  if  it  is  difficult  for  us  to  conceive 
that  the  future  pre-exists,  perhaps  it  is  just  as  diffi- 
cult for  us  to  understand  that  it  does  not  exist; 
moreover,  many  facts  tend  to  prove  that  it  is  as 
real  and  definite  and  has,  both  in  time  and  eternity, 
the  same  permanence  and  the  same  vividness  as 
the  past.  Now,  from  the  moment  that  it  pre-exists, 
it  is  not  surprising  that  we  should  be  able  to  know 
it;  it  is  even  astonishing,  granted  that  it  overhangs 

267 


268  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

us  from  every  side,  that  we  should  not  discover 
it  oftener  and  more  easily." 

Above  all  it  is  astonishing  and  almost  incon- 
ceivable that  this  universal  war,  the  most  stupen- 
dous catastrophe  that  has  overwhelmed  humanity 
since  the  origin  of  things,  should  not,  while  it  was 
approaching,  bearing  in  its  womb  innumerable 
woes  which  were  about  to  affect  almost  every  one 
of  us,  have  thrown  upon  us  more  plainly,  from  the 
recesses  of  those  days  in  which  it  was  making  ready, 
its  menacing  shadow.  One  would  think  that  it 
ought  to  have  overcast  the  whole  horizon  of  the 
future,  even  as  it  will  overcast  the  whole  horizon  of 
the  past.  A  secret  of  such  weight,  suspended  in 
time,  ought  surely  to  have  weighed  upon  all  our 
lives ;  and  presentiments  or  revelations  should  have 
arisen  on  every  hand.  There  was  none  of  these. 
We  lived  and  moved  without  uneasiness  beneath 
the  disaster  which,  from  year  to  year,  from  day  to 
day,  from  hour  to  hour,  was  descending  upon  the 
world;  and  we  perceived  it  only  when  it  touched 
our  heads.  True,  it  was  more  or  less  foreseen  by 
our  reason;  but  our  reason  hardly  believed  in  it; 
and  besides  I  am  not  for  the  moment  speaking  of 
the  inductions  of  the  understanding,  which  are  al- 


WAR  AND  THE  PROPHETS     269 

ways  uncertain  and  which  are  resigned  beforehand 
to  the  capricious  contradictions  which  they  are  daily 
accustomed  to  receive  from  facts. 

2 

But  I  repeat,  beside  or  above  these  inductions 
of  our  everyday  logic,  in  the  less  familiar  domain 
of  supernatural  intuitions,  of  divination,  predic- 
tion or  prophecy  properly  so-called,  we  find  that 
there  was  practically  nothing  to  warn  us  of  the  vast 
peril.  This  does  not  mean  that  there  was  any  lack 
of  predictions  or  prophecies  collected  after  the 
event;  these  number,  it  appears,  no  fewer  than 
eighty-three;  but  none  of  them,  excepting  those  of 
Leon  Sonrel  and  the  Rector  of  Ars,  which  we  will 
examine  in  a  moment,  is  worthy  of  serious  discus- 
sion. I  shall  therefore  mention,  by  way  of  a  re- 
minder, only  the  most  widely  known;  and,  first  of 
all,  the  famous  prophecy  of  ^layence  or  Stras- 
burg,  which  is  supposed  to  have  been  discovered 
by  a  certain  Jecker  in  an  ancient  convent  founded 
near  Mayence  by  St.  Hildegarde,  of  which  the 
original  text  could  not  be  found  and  of  which  no 
one  until  lately  had  ever  heard.  Then  there  is  an- 
other prophecy  of   Mayence  (>r  Flensbcrg,   pub- 


270  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

lished  in  the  Neue  Metaphysische  Rundschau  of 
Berlin  in  February  1912,  in  which  the  end  of  the 
German  Empire  is  announced  for  the  year  1913. 
Next,  we  have  various  predictions  uttered  by  Mme. 
de  Thebes,  by  Dom  Bosco,  by  Blessed  Andrew 
Bobola,  by  Korzenicki  the  Polish  monk,  by  Tol- 
stoy, by  Brother  Hermann  and  so  on,  which  are 
even  less  interesting;  and,  lastly,  the  prophecy  of 
"Brother  Johannes,"  published  by  M.  Josephin 
Peladan  in  the  Figaro  of  16  September  1914,  which 
contains  no  evidence  of  genuineness  and  must 
therefore  be  regarded  merely  as  an  ingenious  liter- 
ary conceit. 

3 

All  these,  on  examination,  leave  but  a  worthless 
residuum;  but  the  prophecies  of  the  Rector  of  Ars 
and  Leon  Sonrel  are  more  curious  and  worthy  of 
a  moment's  attention. 

Father  Jean-Baptiste  Vianney,  Rector  of  Ars, 
was,  as  everybody  knows,  a  very  saintly  priest, 
who  appears  to  have  been  endowed  with  extra- 
ordinary mediumistic  faculties.  The  prophecy  in 
question  was  made  public  in  1862,  three  years  after 
the  miracle-worker's  death,  and  was  confirmed  by 
a  letter  which  Mgr.  Perriet  addressed  to  the  Very 


WAR  AND  THE  PROPHETS     271 

Rev.  Dom  Grea  on  the  24th  of  February  1908. 
Moreover  it  was  printed,  as  far  back  as  1872,  in 
a  collection  entitled,  Voir  prophctiques,  on  signcs, 
apparitions  et  predictions  modernes.  It  therefore 
has  an  incontestable  date.  I  pass  over  the  part 
relating  to  the  war  of  1870,  which  does  not  offer 
the  same  safeguards;  but  I  give  that  which  con- 
cerns the  present  war,  quoting  from  the  1872  text: 

"The  enemies  will  not  go  altogether;  they  will 
return  again  and  destroy  everything  upon  their 
passage;  we  shall  not  resist  them,  but  will  allow 
them  to  advance;  and,  after  that,  we  shall  cut  off 
their  provisions  and  make  them  suffer  great  losses. 
They  will  retreat  towards  their  country;  we  shall 
follow  them  and  there  will  be  hardly  any  who  re- 
turn home.  Then  we  shall  take  back  all  that  they 
took  from  us  and  much  more." 

As  for  the  date  of  the  event,  it  is  stated  definitely 
and  rather  strikingly  in  these  words: 

"They  will  want  to  canonise  me,  but  there  will 
not  be  time." 

Now  the  preliminaries  to  the  canonisation  of 
the  Rector  of  Ars  were  begun  in  July  1914,  but 
were  abandoned  because  of  the  war. 


272  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

4 

I  now  come  to  the  Sonrel  prediction.  I  will  sum- 
marise it  as  briefly  as  j)ossible  from  the  admirable 
article  which  M.  de  Vesme  devoted  to  it  in  the 
Annates  des  Sciences  Psychiques} 

On  the  3rd  of  June  1914 — observe  the  date — 
Professor  Charles  Richet  handed  M.  de  Vesme, 
from  Dr.  Amedee  Tardieu,  a  manuscript  of  which 
the  following  is  the  substance :  on  the  23rd  or  24th 
of  July  1869,  Dr.  Tardieu  was  strolling  in  the 
gardens  of  the  Luxembourg  with  his  friend  Leon 
Sonrel,  a  former  pupil  of  the  Higher  Normal 
School  and  teacher  of  natural  philosophy  at  the 
Paris  Observatory,  when  the  latter  had  a  kind  of 
vision  in  the  course  of  which  he  predicted  various 
precise  and  actual  episodes  of  the  war  of  1870,  such 
as  the  collection  on  behalf  of  the  wounded  at  the 
moment  of  departure  and  the  amount  of  the  sum 
collected  in  the  soldiers'  kepis;  incidents  of  the 
journey  to  the  frontier;  the  battle  of  Sedan,  the 
rout  of  the  French,  the  civil  war,  the  siege  of  Paris, 
his  own  death,  the  birth  of  a  posthumous  child,  the 
doctor's  political  career  and  so  on:  predictions  all 
of  which  were  verified,  as  is  attested  by  numerous 

^  August,  September  and  October  1915. 


WAR  AND  THE  PROPHETS     273 

witnesses  who  are  worthy  of  the  fullest  credence. 
But  I  will  pass  over  this  part  of  the  story  and  con- 
sider only  that  portion  which  refers  to  the  present 
war: 

"I  have  been  waiting  for  two  years,"  to  quote 
the  text  of  Dr.  Tardieu's  manuscript  of  the  3rd 
of  June,  'T  have  been  waiting  for  two  years  for 
the  sequel  of  the  prediction  which  you  are  about  to 
read.  I  omit  everything  that  concerns  my  friend 
Leon's  family  and  my  own  private  affairs.  Yet 
there  is  in  my  life  at  this  moment  a  personal  mat- 
ter, which,  as  always  happens,  agrees  too  closely 
with  general  occurrences  for  me  to  be  able  to  doubt 
what  follows: 

"  'O  my  God!  My  country  is  lost:  France  is 
dead!  .  .  .  What  a  disaster!  .  .  .  Ah,  see,  she  is 
saved!  She  extends  to  the  Rhine!  O  France,  O 
my  beloved  country,  you  are  triumphant;  you  are 
the  queen  of  nations!  .  .  .  Your  genius  shines 
forth  over  the  world.  .  .  .  All  the  earth  wonders 
at  you.  .  .  . 

These  are  the  words  contained  In  the  document 
written  at  the  Mont-Dore  on  the  3nl  and  handed 
to  M.  de  Vesme  on  the  13th  of  June,  1914,  at  a 


274  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

moment  when  no  one  was  thinking  of  the  terrible 
war  which  to-day  is  ravaging  half  the  world. 

When  questioned,  after  the  declaration  of  war, 
by  M.  de  Vesme  on  the  subject  of  the  prophetic 
phrase,  "I  have  been  waiting  for  two  years  for  the 
sequel  of  the  prediction  which  you  are  about  to 
read,"  Dr.  Tardieu  replied,  on  the  12th  of  Avigust: 

"I  had  been  waiting  for  two  years;  and  I  will 
tell  you  why.  My  friend  Leon  did  not  name  the 
year,  but  the  more  general  events  are  described 
simultaneously  with  the  events  of  my  own  life. 
Now  the  events  which  concern  me  privately  and 
which  were  doubtful  two  years  ago  became  certain 
in  April  or  May  last.  My  friends  know  that  since 
May  last  I  have  been  announcing  war  as  due  be- 
fore September,  basing  my  prediction  on  coinci- 
dences with  events  in  my  private  life  of  which  I  do 
not  speak." 

5 

These,  up  to  the  present,  are  the  only  prophecies 
known  to  us  that  deserve  any  particular  attention. 
The  prediction  in  both  is  timid  and  laconic;  but, 
in  those  regions  where  the  least  gleam  of  light 
assumes  extraordinary  importance,  it  is  not  to  be 
neglected.     I  admit,  for  the  rest,  that  there  has 


WAR  AND  THE  PROPHETS     275 

so  far  been  no  time  to  carry  out  a  serious  enquiry 
on  this  point,  but  I  should  be  greatly  surprised  if 
any  such  enquiry  gave  positive  results  and  if  it 
did  not  allow  us  to  state  that  the  gigantic  event, 
as  a  whole,  as  a  general  event,  was  neither  foreseen 
nor  divined.  On  the  other  hand,  we  shall  probably 
learn,  when  the  enquiry  is  completed,  that  hun- 
dreds of  deaths,  accidents,  wounds  and  cases  of  in- 
dividual ruin  and  misfortune  included  in  the  great 
disaster  were  predicted  by  clairvoyants,  by  medi- 
ums, by  dreams  and  by  everj^  other  manner  of  pre- 
monition with  a  definiteness  sufficient  to  eliminate 
any  kind  of  doubt.  I  have  said  elsewhere  what  I 
think  of  individual  predictions  of  this  kind,  which 
seem  to  be  no  more  than  the  reading  of  the  pre- 
sentiments which  we  carry  within  us,  presentiments 
which  themselves,  in  the  majority  of  cases,  are  but 
the  perception,  by  the  as  yet  imperfectly  known 
senses  of  our  subconsciousness,  of  events  in  course 
of  formation  or  in  process  of  realisation  which  es- 
cape the  attention  of  our  understanding.  How- 
ever, it  would  still  remain  to  be  explained  how  a 
wholly  accidental  death  or  wound  could  be  per- 
ceived by  these  subliminal  senses  as  an  event  in 
course  of  formation.     In  any  case,  it  would  once 


276  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

more  be  confirmed,  after  this  great  test,  that  the 
knowledge  of  the  future,  so  soon  as  it  ceases  to  re- 
fer to  a  strictly  personal  fact  and  one,  moreover, 
not  at  all  remote,  is  always  illusory,  or  rather  im- 
possible. 

Apart  then  from  these  strictly  personal  cases, 
which  for  the  moment  we  will  agree  to  set  aside, 
it  appears  more  than  ever  certain  that  there  is  no 
communication  between  ourselves  and  the  vast  store 
of  events  which  have  not  yet  occurred  and  which 
nevertheless  seem  already  to  exist  at  some  place, 
where  they  await  the  hour  to  advance  upon  us, 
or  rather  the  moment  when  we  shall  pass  before 
them.  As  for  the  exceptional  and  precarious  in- 
filtrations which  belong  not  merely  to  the  present 
that  is  still  unknown,  veiled  or  disguised,  but  really 
to  the  future,  apart  from  the  two  which  we  have 
just  examined,  which  are  inconclusive,  I,  for  my 
part,  know  of  but  four  or  five  that  appear  to  be 
rigorously  verified;  and  these  I  have  discussed 
in  the  essay  which  I  have  already  mentioned.  For 
that  matter,  they  have  no  bearing  upon  the  present 
war.  They  are,  when  all  is  said,  so  exceptional 
that  they  do  not  prove  much;  at  the  most,  they 
seem  to  confirm  the  idea  that  a  store  exists  filled 


WAR  AND  THE  PROPHETS     277 

with  future  events  as  real,  as  distinct  and  as  immu- 
table as  those  of  the  past;  and  they  allow  us  to 
hope  that  there  are  paths  leading  thither  which 
as  yet  we  do  not  know,  but  which  it  will  not  be 
for  ever  impossible  to  discover. 


XV 
THE  WILL  OF  EARTH 


XV 
THE  WILL  OF  EARTH 


TO-DAY'S  conflict  is  but  a  revival  of  that 
which  has  not  ceased  to  drench  the  west 
of  Europe  in  blood  since  the  historical 
birth  of  the  continent.  The  two  chief  episodes  in 
this  struggle,  as  we  all  know,  are  the  invasion  of 
Roman  Gaul,  including  the  north  of  Italy,  by  the 
Franks  and  the  successive  conquests  of  England 
by  the  Anglo-Saxons  and  the  Normans.  Without 
delaying  to  consider  questions  of  race,  which  are 
complex,  uncertain  and  always  open  to  discussion, 
we  may,  regarding  the  matter  from  another  aspect, 
perceive  in  the  persistency  and  the  bitterness  of  this 
conflict  the  clash  of  two  wills,  of  which  one  or  the 
other  succumbs  for  a  moment,  only  to  rise  up  again 
with  increased  energy  and  obstinacy.  On  the  one 
hand  is  the  will  of  earth  or  nature,  which,  in  the 
human  species  as  in  all  others,  openly  favours  brute 

281 


282  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

or  physical  force ;  and  on  the  other  hand  is  the  will 
of  humanity,  or  at  least  of  a  portion  of  humanity, 
which  seeks  to  establish  the  empire  of  other  more 
subtle  and  less  animal  forces.  It  is  incontestable 
that  hitherto  the  former  has  always  won  the  day. 
But  it  is  equally  incontestable  that  its  victory  has 
always  been  only  apparent  and  of  brief  duration. 
It  has  regularly  suffered  defeat  in  its  very  tri- 
umph. Gaul,  invaded  and  overrun,  presently  ab- 
sorbs her  victor,  even  as  England  little  by  little 
transforms  her  conquerors.  On  the  morrow  of  vic- 
tory, the  instruments  of  the  will  of  earth  turn  upon 
her  and  arm  the  hand  of  the  vanquished.  It  is  pro- 
bable that  the  same  phenomenon  would  recur  once 
more  to-day,  were  events  to  follow  the  course  pre- 
scribed by  destiny.  Germany,  after  crushing  and 
enslaving  the  greater  part  of  Europe,  after  driv- 
ing her  back  and  burdening  her  with  innumerable 
woes,  would  end  by  turning  against  the  will  which 
she  represents;  and  that  will,  which  until  to-day 
had  always  found  in  this  race  a  docile  tool  and  its 
favourite  accomplices,  would  be  forced  to  seek  these 
elsewhere,  a  task  less  easy  than  of  old. 


THE  WILL  OF  EARTH  283 

2 

But  now,  to  the  amazement  of  all  those  who  will 
one  day  consider  them  in  cold  blood,  events  are 
suddenly  ascending  the  irresistible  current  and,  for 
the  first  time  since  we  have  been  in  a  position  to 
observe  it,  the  adverse  will  is  encountering  an  un- 
expected and  insurmountable  resistance.  If  this  re- 
sistance, as  we  can  now  no  longer  doubt,  maintains 
itself  victoriously  to  the  end,  there  will  never  per- 
haps have  been  such  a  sudden  change  in  the  history 
of  mankind;  for  man  will  have  gained,  over  the 
will  of  earth  or  nature  or  fatality,  a  triumph  in- 
finitely more  significant,  more  heavily  fraught  with 
consequences  and  perhaps  more  decisive  than  all 
those  which,  in  other  provinces,  appear  to  have 
crowned  his  eff*orts  more  brilliantly. 

Let  us  not  then  be  surprised  that  this  resistance 
should  be  stupendous,  or  that  it  should  be  pro- 
longed beyond  anything  that  our  experience  of 
wars  has  taught  us  to  expect.  It  was  our  prompt 
and  easy  defeat  that  was  written  in  the  annals  of 
destiny.  We  had  against  us  all  the  forces  accu- 
mulated since  the  birth  of  Europe.  We  have  to 
set  history  revolving  in  the  reverse  direction.     We 


284  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

are  on  the  point  of  succeeding;  and,  if  it  be  true 
that  intelHgent  beings  watch  us  from  the  vantage- 
point  of  other  worlds,  they  will  assuredly  witness 
the  most  curious  spectacle  that  our  planet  has  of- 
fered them  since  they  discovered  it  amid  the  dust 
of  stars  that  glitters  in  space  around  it.  They 
must  be  telling  themselves  in  amazement  that  the 
ancient  and  fundamental  laws  of  earth  are  sud- 
denly being  transgressed. 


Suddenly?  That  is  going  too  far.  This  trans- 
gression of  a  lower  law,  which  was  no  longer  of 
the  stature  of  mankind,  had  been  preparing  for  a 
very  long  time;  but  it  was  within  an  ace  of  being 
hideously  punished.  It  succeeded  only  by  the 
aid  of  a  part  of  those  who  formerly  swelled  the 
great  wave  which  they  are  to-day  resisting  by  our 
side,  as  though  something  in  the  history  of  the 
world  or  the  plans  of  destiny  had  altered ;  or  rather 
as  though  w^e  ourselves  had  at  last  succeeded  in 
altering  that  something  and  in  modifying  laws  to 
which  until  this  day  we  were  wholly  subject. 

But  it  must  not  be  thought  that  the  conflict  will 
end  with  the  victory.     The  deep-seated  forces  of 


THE  WILL  OF  EARTH  285 

earth  will  not  be  at  once  disarmed ;  for  a  long  time 
to  come  the  invisible  war  will  be  waged  under  the 
reign  of  peace.  If  we  are  not  careful,  victory  may 
even  be  more  disastrous  to  us  than  defeat.  For  de- 
feat, indeed,  like  previous  defeats,  would  have  been 
merely  a  victory  postponed.  It  would  have  ab- 
sorbed, exhausted,  dispersed  the  enemy,  by  scat- 
tering him  about  the  world,  whereas  our  victory 
will  bring  u23on  us  a  two-fold  peril.  It  will  leave 
the  enemy  in  a  state  of  savage  isolation  in  which, 
thrown  back  upon  himself,  cramped,  purified  by 
misfortune  and  poverty,  he  will  secretly  reinforce 
his  formidable  virtues,  while  w^e,  for  our  part,  no 
longer  held  in  check  by  his  unbearable  but  salutary 
menace,  will  give  rein  to  failings  and  vices  which 
sooner  or  later  will  place  us  at  his  mercy.  Before 
thinking  of  peace,  then,  we  must  make  sure  of  the 
future  and  render  it  powerless  to  injure  us.  We 
cannot  take  too  many  precautions,  for  we  are  set- 
ting ourselves  against  the  manifest  desire  of  the 
power  that  bears  us. 

This  is  why  our  efforts  are  difficult  and  worthy 
of  praise.  We  are  setting  ourselves — we  cannot 
too  often  repeat  it — against  the  will  of  eartli.  (^nr 
enemies  are  urffcd  forward  bv  a  force  that  drives 


286  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

us  back.  They  are  marching  with  nature,  whereas 
we  are  striving  against  the  great  current  that 
sweeps  the  globe.  The  earth  has  an  idea,  which 
is  no  longer  ours.  She  remains  convinced  that  man 
is  an  animal  in  all  things  like  other  animals.  She 
has  not  yet  observed  that  he  is  withdrawing  him- 
self from  the  herd.  She  does  not  yet  know  that 
he  has  climbed  her  highest  mountain-peaks.  She 
has  not  yet  heard  tell  of  justice,  pity,  loyalty  and 
honour;  she  does  not  realise  what  they  are,  or  con- 
founds them  with  weakness,  clumsiness,  fear  and 
stupidity.  She  has  stopped  short  at  the  original 
certitudes  which  were  indispensable  to  the  begin- 
nings of  life.  She  is  lagging  behind  us;  and  the 
interval  that  divides  us  is  rapidly  increasing.  She 
thinks  less  quickly;  she  has  not  yet  had  time  to 
understand  us.  Moreover,  she  does  not  reckon  as 
we  do;  and  for  her  the  centuries  are  less  than  our 
years.  She  is  slow  because  she  is  almost  eternal, 
while  we  are  prompt  because  we  have  not  many 
hours  before  us.  It  may  be  that  one  day  her 
thought  will  overtake  ours;  in  the  meantime,  we 
have  to  vindicate  our  advance  and  to  prove  to  our- 
selves, as  we  are  beginning  to  do,  that  it  is  law- 
ful to  be  in  the  right  as  against  her,  that  our  ad- 


THE  WILL  OF  EARTH  287 

vance  is  not  fatal  and  that  it  is  possible  to  maintain 
it. 

4 

For  it  is  becoming  difficult  to  argue  that  earth 
or  nature  is  always  right  and  that  those  who  do 
not  blindly  follow  earth's  impulses  are  necessarily 
doomed  to  perish.  We  have  learned  to  observe 
her  more  attentively  and  we  have  won  the  right 
to  judge  her.  We  have  discovered  that,  far  from 
being  infallible,  she  is  continually  making  mis- 
takes. She  gropes  and  hesitates.  She  does  not 
know  precisely  what  she  wants.  She  begins  by 
making  stupendous  blunders.  She  first  peoples  the 
world  with  uncouth  and  incoherent  monsters,  not 
one  of  which  is  capable  of  living;  these  all  disap- 
pear. Gradually  she  acquires,  at  the  cost  of  the 
life  which  she  creates,  an  experience  that  is  the 
cruel  fruit  of  the  immeasurable  suffering  which  she 
unfeelingly  inflicts.  At  last  she  grows  wiser, 
curbs  and  amends  herself,  corrects  herself,  returns 
upon  her  footsteps,  repairs  her  errors,  expending 
her  best  energies  and  her  highest  intelhgence  u])on 
the  correction.  It  is  incontestable  that  she  is  iin- 
proving  her  methods,  that  she  is  more  skilful,  more 
prudent  and  less  extravagant  than  at  the  outset. 


288  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

And  yet  the  fact  remains  that,  in  every  depart- 
ment of  life,  in  every  organism,  down  to  our  own 
bodies,  there  is  a  survival  of  bad  workmanship,  of 
twofold  functions,  of  oversights,  changes  of  inten- 
tion, absurdities,  useless  complications  and  mean- 
ingless waste.  We  therefore  have  no  reason  to  be- 
lieve that  our  enemies  are  in  the  right  because  earth 
is  with  them.  Earth  does  not  possess  the  truth  any 
more  than  we  do.  She  seeks  it,  as  do  we,  and  dis- 
covers it  no  more  readily.  She  seems  to  know  no 
more  than  we  whither  she  is  going  or  whither  she  is 
being  led  by  that  w^hich  leads  all  things. 

We  must  not  listen  to  her  without  enquiry;  and 
we  need  not  distress  ourselves  or  despair  because 
we  are  not  of  her  opinion.  We  are  not  dealing 
with  an  infallible  and  unchangeable  wisdom,  to 
oppose  which  in  our  thoughts  would  be  madness. 
We  are  actually  proving  to  her  that  it  is  she  who 
is  in  fault ;  that  man's  reason  for  existence  is  loftier 
than  that  which  she  provisionally  assigned  to  him; 
that  he  is  already  outstripping  all  that  she  fore- 
saw; and  that  she  does  wrong  to  delay  his  advance. 
She  is,  indeed,  full  of  good-will,  is  able  on  occasion 
to  recognise  her  mistakes  and  to  obviate  their  dis- 
astrous results  and  by  no  means  takes  refuge  in  ma- 


THE  WILL  OF  EARTH  289 

jestic  and  inflexible  self-conceit.  If  we  are  able  to 
persevere,  we  shall  be  able  to  con\'ince  her.  ISIuch 
time  will  be  needed,  for,  I  repeat,  she  is  slow, 
though  in  no  wise  obstinate.  ]Much  time  will  be 
needed  because  a  very  long  future  is  in  question,  a 
very  great  change  and  the  most  important  victory 
that  man  has  ever  hoped  to  win. 


XVI 
WHEN   THE   WAR  IS   OVER 


XVI 
WHEN   THE   WAR  IS   OVER 


BEFORE  closing  this  book,  I  wish  to  weigh 
for  the  last  time  in  my  conscience  the  words 
of  hatred  and  malediction  which  the  war 
has  made  me  utter  in  spite  of  myself.  We  have 
to  do  with  the  strangest  of  enemies.  He  has 
knowingly  and  deliberately,  while  in  the  full  pos- 
session of  his  faculties  and  without  necessity  or 
excuse,  revived  all  the  crimes  which  we  supposed 
to  be  for  ever  buried  in  the  barbarous  past.  He 
has  trampled  under  foot  all  the  precepts  which 
man  had  so  painfully  won  from  the  cruel  darkness 
of  his  beginnings;  he  has  violated  all  the  laws  of 
justice,  humanity,  loyalty  and  honour,  from  the 
highest,  which  are  almost  godlike,  to  the  simplest, 
the  most  elementary,  which  still  belong  to  the  lower 
worlds.     There  is   no  longer  any  doubt  on  this 

.293 


294  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

point :  it  has  been  proved  over  and  over  again  until 
we  have  attained  a  final  certitude. 

2 

On  the  other  hand,  it  is  no  less  certain  that  he 
has  displayed  virtues  which  it  would  be  unworthy 
of  us  to  deny;  for  we  honour  ourselves  in  recog- 
nising the  valour  of  those  whom  we  are  fighting. 
He  has  gone  to  his  death  in  deep,  compact,  dis- 
ciplined masses,  with  a  blind,  hopeless,  obstinate 
heroism,  of  which  no  such  lurid  example  had  ever 
yet  been  known  and  which  has  many  times  com- 
pelled our  admiration  and  our  pity.  He  has  known 
how  to  sacrifice  himself,  with  unprecedented  and 
perhaps  unequalled  abnegation,  to  an  idea  which 
we  know  to  be  false,  inhuman  and  even  somewhat 
mean,  but  which  he  believes  to  be  just  and  lofty; 
and  a  sacrifice  of  this  kind,  whatever  its  object,  is 
always  the  proof  of  a  force  which  survives  those 
who  devote  themselves  to  making  it  and  must  com- 
mand respect. 

I  know  very  well  that  this  heroism  is  not  like 
the  heroism  which  we  love.  For  us,  heroism  must 
before  all  be  voluntary,  free  from  any  constraint, 
active,   ardent,   eager   and   spontaneous;   whereas 


WHEN  THE  WAR  IS  OVER     295 

with  our  enemies  it  has  mingled  with  it  a  great  deal 
of  servility,  passiveness,  sadness,  gloomy,  ignorant, 
massive  submission  and  rather  base  fears.  It  is 
nevertheless  the  fact  that,  in  the  moment  of  su- 
preme peril,  little  remains  of  all  these  distinctions 
and  that  no  force  in  the  world  can  drive  to  its  death 
a  people  which  does  not  bear  within  itself  the 
strength  to  confront  it.  Our  soldiers  make  no  mis- 
take upon  this  point.  Question  the  men  returning 
from  the  trenches:  thej^  detest  the  enemy,  they 
abhor  the  aggressor,  the  unjust  and  arrogant  ag- 
gressor, uncouth,  too  often  cruel  and  treacherous; 
but  they  do  not  hate  the  man:  they  do  him  justice; 
they  pity  him ;  and,  after  the  battle,  in  the  defence- 
less wounded  soldier  or  disarmed  prisoner  they 
recognise,  with  astonishment,  a  brother  in  misfor- 
tune who,  like  themselves,  is  submitting  to  duties 
and  laws  which,  like  themselves,  he  too  believes 
lofty  and  necessary.  Under  the  insufferable  enemy 
they  see  an  unhappy  man  who  likewise  is  bearing 
the  burden  of  life.  They  forget  the  tilings  that 
divide  them  to  recall  only  those  which  unite  them 
in  a  common  destiny;  and  they  teach  us  a  great  les- 
son. Better  than  ourselves,  who  are  far  from  dan- 
ger, at  the  contact  of  profound  and  fearful  verities 


296  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

and  realities  they  are  already  beginning  to  discern 
something  that  we  cannot  yet  perceive;  and  their 
obscure  instinct  is  probably  anticipating  the  judg- 
ment of  history  and  our  own  judgment,  when  we 
see  more  clearly.  Let  us  learn  from  them  to  be 
just  and  to  distinguish  that  which  we  are  bound  to 
despise  and  loathe  from  that  which  we  may  pity, 
love  and  respect.  Setting  aside  the  unpardonable 
aggression  and  the  inexpiable  violation  of  treaties, 
this  war,  despite  its  insanity,  has  come  near  to 
being  a  bloody  but  magnificent  proof  of  greatness, 
heroism  and  the  spirit  of  sacrifice.  Humanity  was 
ready  to  rise  above  itself,  to  surpass  all  that  it  had 
hitherto  accomplished.  It  has  surpassed  it.  Never 
before  had  nations  been  seen  capable  for  months 
on  end,  perhaps  for  years,  of  renouncing  their 
repose,  their  security,  their  wealth,  their  comfort, 
all  that  they  possessed  and  loved,  down  to  their 
very  life,  in  order  to  do  what  they  believed  to  be 
their  duty.  Never  before  had  nations  been  seen 
that  M'ere  able  as  a  whole  to  understand  and  admit 
that  the  happiness  of  each  of  those  who  live  in  this 
time  of  trial  is  of  no  consequence  compared  with 
the  honour  of  those  who  live  no  more  or  the  happi- 
ness of  those  who  are  not  yet  alive.    We  stand  on 


WHEN  THE  WAR  IS  OVER     297 

heights  that  had  not  been  attained  before.  And,  if, 
on  the  enemies'  side,  this  unexampled  renunciation 
had  not  been  poisoned  at  its  source;  if  the  war 
which  they  are  waging  against  us  had  been  as  fine, 
as  loyal,  as  generous,  as  chivalrous  as  that  which 
we  are  waging  against  them,  we  may  well  believe 
that  it  would  have  been  the  last  and  that  it  would 
have  ended,  not  in  a  battle,  but,  like  the  awaken- 
ing from  an  evil  dream,  in  a  noble  and  fraternal 
amazement.  They  have  made  that  impossible;  and 
this,  we  may  be  sure,  is  the  disappointment  which 
the  future  will  find  it  most  difficult  to  forgive 
them. 

3 

What  are  we  to  do  now?  ]Must  we  hate  the 
enemy  to  the  end  of  time?  The  burden  of  hatred 
is  the  heaviest  that  man  can  bear  upon  this  earth; 
and  we  should  faint  under  the  weight  of  it.  On 
the  other  hand,  we  do  not  wish  once  more  to  be  the 
dupes  and  victims  of  confidence  and  love.  Here 
again  our  soldiers,  in  their  simplicity,  wliich  is  so 
clear-seeing  and  so  close  to  the  truth,  anticipate 
the  future  and  teach  us  what  to  admit  and  what 
to  avoid.  We  have  seen  that  they  do  not  hate  the 
man;  but  they  do  not  trust  him  at  all.    They  dis- 


298  THE  LIGHT  BEYOND 

cover  the  human  being  in  him  only  when  he  is  un- 
armed. They  know,  from  bitter  experience,  that, 
so  long  as  he  possesses  weapons,  he  cannot  resist 
the  frenzy  of  destruction,  treachery  and  slaughter; 
and  that  he  does  not  become  kindly  until  he  is  ren- 
dered powerless. 

Is  he  thus  by  nature,  or  has  he  been  perverted 
by  those  who  lead  him?  Have  the  rulers  dragged 
the  whole  nation  after  them,  or  has  the  whole  nation 
driven  its  rulers  on?  Did  the  rulers  make  the  na- 
tion like  unto  themselves,  or  did  the  nation  select 
and  support  them  because  they  resembled  itself? 
Did  the  evil  come  from  above  or  below,  or  was  it 
everywhere  ?  Here  we  have  the  great  obscure  point 
of  this  terrible  adventure.  It  is  not  easy  to  throw 
light  upon  it  and  still  less  easy  to  find  excuses  for 
it.  If  our  enemies  prove  that  they  were  deceived 
and  corrupted  by  their  masters,  they  prove,  at  the 
same  time,  that  they  are  less  intelligent,  less  firmly 
attached  to  justice,  honour  and  humanity,  less  civi- 
lised, in  a  word,  than  those  whom  they  claimed  the 
right  to  enslave  in  the  name  of  a  superiority  which 
they  themselves  have  proved  not  to  exist;  and,  un- 
less they  can  establish  that  their  errors,  perfidies 
and  cruelties,  which  can  no  longer  be  denied,  should 


WHEN  THE  WAR  IS  OVER     299 

be  imputed  only  to  those  masters,  then  they  them- 
selves must  bear  the  pitiless  weight.  I  do  not  know 
how  they  will  escape  from  this  predicament,  nor 
what  the  future  will  decide,  that  future  which  is 
wiser  than  the  past,  even  as,  in  the  words  of  an  old 
Slav  proverb,  the  dawn  is  wiser  than  the  eve.  In 
the  meanwhile,  let  us  copy  the  prudence  of  our 
soldiers,  who  know  what  to  believe  far  better  than 
we  do. 


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